


We Can Make it, if We Try

by Nicknack2814



Category: Criminal Minds (US TV), Supernatural, Superstore (TV), The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: Crossover, Multi, Slow Burn, Swearing, irregular updates
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-09-24
Updated: 2019-02-01
Packaged: 2019-07-16 11:32:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 10
Words: 60,810
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16085279
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nicknack2814/pseuds/Nicknack2814
Summary: Rosie Winchester finds herself half way across the country when the latest apocolypse hits. Joining a ragtag group of misfits is the best chance she has of finding her brothers, something she won't ever give up on. She had no idea that she was about to find something else she wouldn't want to quit.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> So, first time I've posted here in a while. This is going to be a pretty extensive crossover and I can honestly say that (other than with the main two characters) I don't know where we're all gonna end up. I don't update regularly, so sorry for anyone who needs a steady update, but I find I loose my muse if I'm under too much pressure to stick to a deadline when it comes to fics. 
> 
> The set up for this fic is in TWD universe and timeline, every other character is basically pulled from their show into that one. TWD and SPN are the two main shows I'm using, and sometimes I'll flip from one group to another. There are SPN elements I've used to alter TWD world as well. Ages and stuff that's happened in other shows may not be cannon.
> 
> Anyway, hope you enjoy...

"What happened?"   
  
"Rosie...look...things got out of hand-"  
  
"Out of hand?! The dead are walking around and eating people Dean! That's a little more than out of hand!" Rosanna cried.  
  
"I know. I know." Dean breathed a heavy sigh down the phone. "I'm sorry. Asmodeaus, he got hold of the croatoan virus. He changed it. Made it worse. We couldn't stop it. Roe...this is...this is the end." Dean choked.  
  
"What? What d'you mean? It can't be! There's always a way to fix it!" Rosie said, suddenly feeling very nauseous. Dean's voice, it was so serious and so...defeated. "What about Asmodeaus? Can't he fix it?"  
  
"That's just it Roe, he's dead. The virus got so out of control so fast...it got him too..." Dean went silent. "It got to a lot of people..."  
  
Rosie took a deep breath and tried to quell her tears. She had nothing to say to that. She could barely process it.  
  
"Rosie...just...come home. Come back to the bunker and we can figure it all out together, okay?" he said with a barely audible sniff.  
  
Rosie nodded and then frowned, shaking her head and letting some sembalance of logic and common sense sneak in.  
  
"What the hell Dean?! The world's literally just fucking screwed us and you want me to travel halfway across the fucking continent to look for you?! On my own?!" Rosie yelled down the phone. "I'm in Georgia! You're in Kansas! Come on!"  
  
"Rosie, the dead are walking," Dean snapped. "I'm pretty sure the phones'll all be down in a matter of days, if not hours...the bunker is safe-"  
  
"And this whole country is not! Neither is the several in between them!" Rosie roared, pacing up and down the road, trying not to draw attention to herself. Cars were lined up down the highway, completely gridlocked. Horns sounded and people were yelling, something Rosie knew would only make things worse.   
  
"I don't know what else to do," Dean sighed.   
  
"Me too," Rosie said, her breath catching. "Have you found anything in the bunker? Any way to stop it?"  
  
"No," he replied. "All we know is that it's not just humans that can succumb to the virus. Crowley showed up here, twitchy as hell and actually afraid...demons, angels, werewolves, vamps, the whole shebang...they're all falling to this thing."  
  
"Fuck," Rosie muttered. "That's all we need! Undead fucking monsters!"  
  
"Just be careful Roe," Dean said quietly. "We'll come get you-"  
  
"No! You're safe! Stay safe! Please!" Rosie cried. "I'll do my best to get back to you but I'm not gonna hurry up about it."  
  
"Maybe if we're both moving towards each other, we'll meet in the middle," Dean suggested.   
  
"Or maybe we'll pass right by each other, or maybe we'll all die...jeez Dean, please...stay where you are." Rosie waited with bated breath for his reply.  
  
"I can't do that Roe, you know I can't," he said, his own voice cracking.  
  
"For fuck's sake Dean! Put Sammy on!" Rosie growled.  
  
She heard the fumbling of hands and then heard Sam in her ear, not at all pleased with where his loyalties seemed to lie.  
  
"We're coming to get you and that is final," Sam said.  
  
"Well then, fuck you too." With that Rosie hung up the phone and set her hands on her car taking deep breaths. She set her eyes back on her phone and begrudingly texted her brothers her co-ordinates, with a quick message to tell them she'd message whenever she moved but until then she was saving her battery.   
  
She slid back into her stiflingly hot car and turned the engine back on, plugging her phone in the car charger and sitting quietly, listening to the hubbub of the chaos around her. The virus broke maybe two and half weeks ago. The word took a couple days to get out and Rosie was working a case in sunny Florida, Miami. People were already en-mass panicking by the time Rosie had managed to close her case and haul her ass in the direction of home, so the nine or so hours it should have taken her to get this far (just outside Atlanta) had ended up taking a week. And it only got worse. She'd been trying to find a way out of Georgia for nearly another week, and that had gotten her stuck in a gridlock out of the city.   
  
She was jolted out of her self-pitying thoughts and regrets by some loud screaming coming from down the car-packed road. Jumping out of her still idling car, she popped the trunk and grabbed her favourite knife. As people ran towards her, she effortlessly slipped around them towards the direction of the anguished screams and rather disturbing hissing noises. Being a hunter, the dead rising had not taken as long for her to come to terms with as it had most people.   
  
Several yards up she spotted them. Three undead, one of which was feasting on a screaming woman, and the other two veering towards a family trapped in a car. Everyone had vacated the area as fast as they could, not that it would help much. Half the people on this highway were probably already bit. Hell, this was the third time today she'd had to deal with this shit. It wouldn't bother her so much if people didn't look at her with about as much fear as they did the dead.   
  
Sighing, she squeezed her hand around her knife and stepped foward. The first guy went down with barely a sound as she thrust the knife through the back of his bloody head. The second turned and nashed it's jaws towards her, but it did nothing to phase her. She stabbed this one sideways, through the temple. Once you've dealt with all manner of monsters, stupid ones like these don't really register on the radar. It was the sheer number of them that was the problem, not necessarily what they were. It wasn't like they had any of their faculties about them.   
  
With that in mind, Rosie walked straight up to the third one and plunged the knife into her head. The woman on the floor was still whimpering, most of her lower internal organs spread out across her stomach and legs.  
"I'm so sorry," Rosie whispered, as she knelt next to her, smoothing her bloodied hair out of her face. "I'm so so sorry..."  
  
The knife slipped through her head like butter. Quick and painless, relieving her of the agony she must have been in before her untimely death.   
  
Rosie stood up and wiped the bloody blade on the bottom of her jeans, turning to make her way back towards her car.   
  
"Hey! You! Stop!" A deep male voice sounded from behind her but Rosie just ignored it. She wasn't interested in answering questions about where she learnt to do that. "Police! I'm ordering you to stop!"   
  
Rosie snorted and turned around, raising an eyebrow at him. "I'm pretty sure whatever authority you think you have, died about the same time this world did."  
  
"I said stop! Or I will shoot you!" He raised a gun and Rosie noticed that he'd stepped out of the same car the dead had been up against.  
  
"Well, that'd be a really weird way to say thanks, don't you think?" Rosie said, setting her hands on her hips.  
  
The guy looked at her, his eyes darting all along her face and body, trying to work out what it was he should do. She got it, really she did. Three weeks ago, his response to her stabbing four people in the head in broad daylight, would be just this. It's kinda hard to break a habit when it's drilled into you like it would have been for this guy. Rosie knew she just needed to give his head a minute to catch up with the crap this new world was throwing at them.   
  
"Shane..." The woman sat in the passenger seat called his attention and nodded, seemingly trying to calm him down.  
  
Shane sighed, nodded and lowered the gun. "Sorry..."  
  
"Old habits die hard, right?" Rosie answered, shrugging.   
  
"Yeah, something like that," Shane muttered.   
  
Rosie nodded, turning back to her car and stalking off.  
  
"Wait!" Shane yelled.  
  
"What?!" Rosie huffed, swinging back round. She noticed the woman from the car running along behind him as he came towards her. A small boy gingerly jumped out the back of the car too.  
  
"D'you know what's going on around here?" he asked.  
  
"Me? Why would I know?" Rosie frowned, doing her best to look totally confused.  
"Well, you didn't even flinch when you took out all those...things..."  
  
Rosie subdued the chuckle that rose up and threatened to escape her lips. "I've had a lot of experience with monsters."  
It was Shane's turn to frown, not sure if she was being serious or not.   
  
"Are you on your own?" the woman asked.  
Rosie simply nodded.  
  
"I'm Shane, this is Lori and her son Carl," Shane explained. "She's my partner's wife. He didn't make it out of the city."  
  
Rosie nodded again, not sure why he was telling her this.  
  
"You can stick with us if you want," Lori offered.  
  
"Thanks, I'll keep that in mind," Rosie said.   
  
Shane nodded, so did Lori, and they ushered Carl back to the car as Rosie turned and walked back to her own. She shook her head as she walked, not really sure what to make of the whole thing. They were the first people who hadn't backed away from her with wide and frightened eyes. She slipped back into her own car and shut the door, leaning back and closing her eyes. She hadn't realised she'd fallen asleep until the screams sounded again.   
.  
Rosie lurched awake to find Shane tapping on her window. She turned the engine off and opened the door, blinking up at him and rubbing her eyes.   
  
"What's happening?" she asked.  
  
"It's getting worse," he said. "There's a group of ten, all just tumbled out a mini-bus."  
  
"Which direction?" Rosie asked, heading to the trunk. Shane pointed and she nodded.  
  
"We're getting off the highway. They've just dropped napalm on the city and this jam ain't going nowhere. You wanna come with?" he offered.  
  
"Nah, I'm gonna go put those poor people down and then I'll follow." Rosie picked up a machete and Shane followed her around the car and peered in the back of the trunk.  
  
"Holy shit!" Shane exclaimed. "I...my cop alarm bells are going all kinds of crazy!"  
  
Rosie snorted and looked at him. "I told you, I've had a lot of experience with monsters."  
  
"You have no idea how hard my head is screaming at me to arrest you right now," he muttered.   
  
"I think I can guess," Rosie sighed. "Look, you head off and I'll catch up. But if we all go now, those ten dead people'll turn into ten more and before you know it they'll be thousands. These things walk towards noise and the smell of fresh food...if I don't take them out, they'll follow us anyway..."   
  
"Fine, then I'm coming with you," Shane said, taking his gun out and holding it in front of him.  
  
"That makes noise," Rosie pointed out.  
  
"Yep, but what are the chances of managing to sneak attack so many?"   
  
"You make a valid point," Rosie said, throwing the machete back in the trunk and picking up a shotgun. She shoved a few rounds in her pocket. "Ready?"  
  
"As I'll ever be," he mumbled. He turned towards Lori and another few people all gathered around her. "Get in the cars and get ready to move. We're gonna go sort out the problem before it multiples and follows us!" he shouted down to them. He waved off Lori's protests and started towards the commotion. Rosie followed him.   
  
It took them five minutes to clear the dead and end the lives of the infected living. Rosie grimaced as she surveyed the scene and the destruction. This was mindless and tragic and absolutely terrible.  
  
"Come on, before we end up with more on our backs," Shane said.  
  
Rosie nodded, twisting on her heels and walking back to her car with him. She got in, started it up and swung out off the road, waiting for Shane's car to do the same. Another car also looked to be joining them. Rosie took a deep breath and blinked back the tears in her eyes.   
  
She followed the convoy off the road and away from the highway. She paid little attention to the direction or how long they'd been driving, which she cursed herself for. Now was not the time to drop the ball. Eventually they came to a stop in what appeared to be a nature park area. It was surrounded by forest and there were high mountains to one side that had helped form a quarry and some sort of body of water.   
  
Everyone seemed to jump out their cars at the same time, but Rosie stayed put. She grabbed her phone and texted Dean her new co-ordinates. The phones might be down but the satellites were still up, and she'd been pigging backing off them for years.   
  
She clambered out the car and popped the trunk again, avoiding Shane's watchful and wary gaze. She slipped a small pistol into a holster and her favourite knife into its sheath, then attatched them to a secondary belt and put it on. She shut the trunk and stalked over to the group, listening to their chattering about how to set up a camp in the little area. She scanned the trees lining the area and spotted a couple of bumbling dead guys wondering towards them. Without even notifying the group, she quietly broke away from them and dispatched the two threats with barely any effort.   
  
As she wiped the blood off her knife, she looked back to see the small group gaping at her.   
"What?" she said, feeling more than a little self-conscious and more than a little irritated that she did.  
  
"You didn't even blink," the woman from the other car whispered.   
  
Rosie huffed and shook her head. "Blinking gets you killed."  
  
She trudged back to the small group as Shane introduced himself, Lori and Carl to the other family that had followed them.  
  
"I'm Ed, this is my wife Carol and my daughter Sophia," he said, laying a possesive hand on each member of his family.  
  
Rosie rejoined the group and all eyes turned to her. "What?"   
  
"What's your name?" Shane asked, frowning at her.  
  
"Oh..." She mulled over whether it was worth lying and giving a false name before deciding it was pointless. "Rosie."  
  
"Nice to meet you Rosie, and thanks for the assist," Shane said, motioning to the dead guys and obviously implying the rest she'd taken down as well.  
  
"So, what now?" Ed grunted. "Way I see it, we're all fucking screwed!"  
  
Shane glared at the overweight man and flicked his eyes towards the two children. "We can set up a camp here. There's plenty to live off, we just have to learn how to use it," Shane said. "We rest up today and tonight, then maybe one or two of us can head back into the city tomorrow and try to find some camping gear. Tents, sleeping bags, that sort of thing."  
  
Ed scoffed. "Whatever man."  
  
"You got a better idea?" Shane snapped and Ed went silent. "Yeah, I thought so."  
.  
The next few hours consisted of wondering around the campsite and getting familiar with their surroundings. Shane instructed everyone on what to do and when, no one going against him. Rosie didn't much care for following orders but she cared even less for giving them. After they'd arranged their cars and repositioned them in more convenient locations, they sat down to rest and eat. Rosie had already revealed that she'd been sitting on quite the haul. Crammed into the back of her car were all manner of food and drink, anything that would last long term. The look of relief and surprise on the faces of the not-so-strangers when Rosie told them she was more than happy to share it all was priceless.  
  
They'd not long sat down to eat when the sound of an engine could be heard in the distance. Shane had already jumped up to greet the approaching van, his gun at the ready. Rosie watched on warily but decided against action, something she felt the others weren't exactly pleased about. As the van pulled up, Shane raised his gun.  
  
"Police. Get out of the van real slow." He kept his gun trained on the driver as he did as asked and slowly slid out of his seat.  
  
"Woah woah woah, we come in peace dude!" the guy said, his hands raised. "I'm T-dog and this here's my buddy Glenn. I picked him up in the city. The whole place is overrun, and the highway too. I've been up to this park before and figured it wasn't a bad place to stop for the night and maybe readjust..."  
  
Glenn kept his hands in the air and looked from Shane to the group and back again.   
Shane considered what he was saying. "You armed?"  
  
"No man, neither of us are," T-dog said.  
  
"Then how the hell d'you make it out?" Rosie piped up with a frown.  
  
"Ran like hell and hoped to God I'd make it," Glenn said. "And a crowbar."  
  
"I was in the van the whole time," T-dog explained. "I was helping the old folks from my church get to the refugee centres..." He fell silent and so did everyone else. They all knew that those centres had fallen.  
  
"Come on, come eat," Shane said, lowering his gun and gesturing for the two men to join them.  
  
"So what? We're just gonna take every waife and stray that turns up?" Ed grumbled.  
  
"We took in you, didn't we?" Shane muttered back.   
  
T-dog and Glenn came to sit in the small circle that the group had instinctively chosen to arrange themselves into. Everyone was introduced and food was passed out to the newcomers who looked like they couldn't be more grateful. The conversation soon struck up again, floating from the cause of this apocolypse to how they were all going to survive it.   
  
Another few hours went by before more people started arriving, and it soon became apparent that everyone who knew about this place was possibly getting the same idea. Rosie groaned internally, she was not a people person and at this rate, the wonderful haul she'd brought with her wouldn't last them all more than a couple of days. Shane seemed to have figured that much out too as he looked around at the ever increasing campsite and took in all the bodies milling around.   
  
"Okay, I think we need rules and we need to assign some jobs and stuff, or people are gonna start getting real twitchy," he murmured to Rosie. She'd taken a minute to linger in the tree line, the noise of the small crowd beginning to drive her mad.   
  
"Yeah, that's probably not a bad idea," she agreed, feeling herself getting twitchy at the idea of being seen as Shane's second in command.  
  
"What d'you reckon about keeping this place safe? Any suggestions?" he asked.  
  
Rosie sighed and shook her head. "Well for starters, everyone needs to keep the damn noise down. I know we're miles away from nowhere but any attention we're drawing to ourselves is bad attention," she said.  
  
Shane nodded. "Yeah, we don't want to attract the dead..."  
  
"Or many more of the living either," Rosie muttered.   
  
"No, I suppose our resources are limited enough," he said.  
  
Rosie shook her head. "That's not what I meant." Shane gave her a curious look before she continued on. "It going to take a certain kind of stomach and a certain kind of person to get much further than this, to bash someone's brains in no matter if they're living or dead. Self-preservation has to be a real strong character trait in anyone who's going to survive, well, almost anyone. This sort of world will bring out the worst in us, not the best, and to be immune to the violence and paranoia it will take to make it...it'll just make us all a different kind of monster..."  
  
Shane considered her words for a moment before looking up at her. "You seem pretty immune..."  
  
"I never told you I wasn't a monster," Rosie said.  
  
"...you saved us. There's no way your a monster," Shane said, shaking his head.  
  
Rosie scoffed. "You never heard the phrase 'you either die a hero or you live long enough to see yourself become the villian'? I'm not dead yet, and I can assure you, it's made me a monster."  
  
Shane just continued to look at her, not really sure what to say. Rosie just looked dead ahead and watched the camp, watched how they all talked and tried to get to know one another. She watched as a few of them tried to assert some dominance over others and she could see the arguments not taking long to start.  
  
"They need a leader, that's for sure," she stated, raising an eyebrow as two of them looked to square off against each other.  
  
"You wanna lead 'em?" Shane asked.  
  
"Fuck no! I don't do leadership," Rosie chuckled sardonically.  
  
"So you're used to following?" he asked.  
  
Rosie shook her head. "I'm used to being alone."  
  
"So, what do we do with 'em?" Shane sighed, surveying the camp.  
  
"Give them all roles. Cooking, cleaning, foraging...those two redneck assholes look like they might be good hunters, going on the easy way the shorter one holds that crossbow..." Rosie said.  
  
"I don't trust 'em," Shane muttered.  
  
"I don't trust anyone," Rosie said with a shrug. "I wouldn't be surprised if those two hatch a plan to steal all our stuff and run away with it, but maybe if we give them the benefit of the doubt, and send them off into the forest for hours on end, they might not end up being the apparent assholes they seem to be."  
  
Shane shrugged and nodded. "You fancy addressing the group with me? Laying down the rules and giving out jobs?"  
  
"No," Rosie said, snickering at Shane's exasperated expression. "You'll be fine." She patted him on the shoulder a couple times and smiled. "I'll go talk to the rednecks, if that helps?"  
  
Shane nodded and sighed, heading towards the bulk of the group while Rosie made her way over to the two men hanging around on the outside of the crowd, despite being the first to turn up after T-dog and Glenn.

"Hey lil darlin', can we help you?" The older man drawled, watching Rosie as she walked over. He looked her up and down, smiling somewhat lecherously.  
  
"I'm Rosie-"  
  
"I'll bet'chu are," he chuckled. "I'm Merle an' this here is my baby brother Daryl."  
  
"Hi," Rosie said, giving a nonchalant wave to Daryl, who barely grunted back.  
  
"So, what brings you all the way out to the two of us?" Merle asked. "We ain't exactly screaming friendly..."  
  
"I was wondering how good you were with that crossbow..." Rosie nodded at the bow in Daryl's hands.   
  
"Good enough," Merle answered. "He's better."  
  
"Then it's him I'm interested in," Rosie said.  
  
Merle whistled and winked at Daryl who curled his lip in what appeared to be disgust but Rosie thought was probably more embarrassment.   
  
"What d'you want?" Daryl muttered, giving her a piercing look.  
  
"We need to establish some long term sustainability. This food isn't gonna last for long and when it runs out there's too many of us to last without doing supply runs every other day at least," Rosie explained.  
  
"What's that got to do with me?" Daryl frowned.  
  
"I was wondering if you could hunt? The forest is big and looks like it could be fairly lucrative to a skilled shot and someone who knows what they're doing..." Rosie paused, looking at him and waiting for a reply.  
  
"What does he get for his efforts?" Merle spoke up, peering contemplatively at her.  
  
"A place in the group. A share of the rest of the food we get...we're all gonna have jobs to do, I figured hunting could be yours. Take it or leave, it's no skin off my back. Hell, I could probably fair well enough myself but I don't have a silent weapon..." Rosie shrugged.  
  
Merle laughed. "Cause that little ol' pistol is gonna catch you a lot."  
  
"I like how you're assuming that this lil old pistol is all I've got," Rosie smirked and folded her arms.   
  
Merle stood up straight and suddenly became much more interested in Rosie. "You got weapons? What kind?"   
  
"The kind that don't concern you," Rosie said.  
  
"Aw, come on sweetheart, sharing is caring," Merle grinned.  
  
"Yeah, that's the problem, 'cause I don't really care," Rosie said.   
  
"Well, maybe you can be persuaded," Merle chuckled.  
  
"You stay out of my Honey or you will regret it," Rosie said, glaring as she pointed a finger at him.   
  
"Your honey? You name your car? And what the hell kind of name is that?" Merle laughed.  
  
"The one I gave her. I don't give a shit what you think about me or my car, you touch her and you're a dead man," Rosie growled.  
  
Merle snickered and stepped forwards, putting himself toe to toe with her. She could feel his breath or her face and see the manic gleam in his eye. "Sweetheart, I am not a man you want to threathen..."  
  
Rosie shrugged. "That's convenient, 'cause I don't make threats. I make promises."  
  
"You don't know who you're dealin' with-"  
  
"No. You don't know who your dealing with," Rosie cut him off. "Men like you are a dime a dosen and I can promise you I've faced far worse. You don't scare me. You never will. So, d'you want to help out and hunt? Be a part of this group? Or are you sticking to your little duo and keeping to yourselves?"  
  
Merle frowned at her, still not moving away. He looked her up and down, his gaze traveling slowly over her breasts and her hips before landing back on her face. He smirked.  
  
"If I play nice, can I tempt ya into showing some sort of physical gratitude?" he asked, winking at her.  
  
"I won't slit your throat while you sleep? Is that good enough?" Rosie asked, starting to lose her temper with the asshole.  
  
Merle laughed again and shook his head. "Come on darlin' it's the end of the world..." He put a hand on her hip and squeezed.  
  
"Hands off or I'll hurt you," Rosie snarled.  
  
"Sweet lil' thing like you-" Merle was interrupted by the excrutiating pain that came from Rosie taking hold of his fingers as she twisted and bent them. He jumped around the small spot, howling in pain.  
  
"Fuckin' bitch!!" He hollered.   
  
"We'll do the huntin'," Daryl said, looking a little bit exasperated with his brother.  
  
"What?! You're gonna do it after she broke my fuckin' fingers!" Merle screamed at him.  
  
Daryl shrugged. "She told ya she was gunna hurt ya. Ya should've listened."  
  
"I'll fix them for you, if you can quit whining like a baby for a few seconds," Rosie offered, shooting Daryl a small smile. He returned it with barely a twitch of his mouth.  
  
"I ain't no baby! You broke my goddamn fingers!" Merle yelled. It was starting to draw attention now and Shane was looking mighty interested. "D'you have any idea what broken fingers feels like, Princess?!"  
  
"D'you want me to fix them or not?" Rosie huffed. "'Cause if not, you're causing a scene and you need to calm down and get over it."  
  
"Fuck you bitch!" Merle snarled.   
  
"Come on Merle, ya busted ya fingers a'fore, it ain't worth this fuss," Daryl grumbled. "Just splint 'em up and get on with it."  
  
"How the hell d'you expect me ta hunt with busted fingers you crazy bitch!" Merle cried.  
  
"I don't. You said Daryl was better with the bow," Rosie said.  
  
"Well, I could have helped with protection. I could've protected you, and this camp!"  
"I don't need protecting. I think I've made that abundently clear."  
  
"You broke my fingers!" Merle hollared again.  
  
"No I didn't. I dislocated them. There's a huge difference. Specifically, how much pain is inflicted," Rosie said.   
  
"Bitch." Merle glared at her, holding his damaged hand in the other one.  
  
"Crazy bitch. And I advise that you don't forget it," Rosie said, giving him a pointed look.   
  
"Just fix my fuckin' fingers," Merle snapped.  
  
"With pleasure," Rosie smiled, walking towards him. She took his hand in hers and turned it so his palm was facing the floor. "By the way, this is going to hurt like hell..."   
  
Rosie didn't even give him chance to register what she'd said before she took hold of his fingers and yanked hard on them, pulling and twisting them back into their sockets. Merle howled and started jumping around again, spewing all sorts of terrible expletives at Rosie.   
  
"Everything okay here?" Shane asked.  
  
"Fine. Merle here was just making a whole bunch of noise over nothing," Rosie explained.   
  
"It weren't nothing! You pulled my fingers outta their damn sockets!" Merle barked.  
  
"Would you like me to tell him why?" Rosie asked, raising a challenging eyebrow.  
  
Merle glared at her as Shane turned to her and frowned.   
  
"What happened?" he asked.  
  
"Nothing interesting," Rosie said. "Daryl said he'd hunt for the group though."  
  
"Daryl ain't gonna do shit for you!" Merle growled.  
  
"Hey! Since when is it up to you what I do?!" Daryl snapped at Merle.   
  
"She damn near broke my fingers!!" Merle roared at him.  
  
"Yeah, and it was your own damn fault! I ain't hauling ass outta here now Merle! Where else're we gunna go?! Ain't like we got anywhere else we could be!" he yelled, gesturing wildly at his brother. It was the most vocal he'd been since they'd got to camp. Merle had been shouting profanities every five minutes from their spot since they'd arrived but Daryl had hung back and stayed fairly quiet.   
  
Merle snarled and glared at him. "Whatever you say baby brother," he said sweetly, an angry look on his face. He stalked up to Rosie and stuck his face in hers. "And you best sleep with one eye open missy..."  
  
"Merle!" Daryl snapped.  
  
Rosie rolled her eyes at Merle. "I don't really sleep, so it won't be a problem."  
.  
Several hours later, the group (now significantly larger) were all sat around a glowing campfire and talking amongst themselves. Shane had proved a strong and capable leader, giving jobs to most members of the camp and creating some sembalance of community in the very short space of time they'd been together.   
  
Small groups had formed and people were starting to get to know one another a little bit better. Rosie found herself part of the original few who'd first parked up, which included T-dog, Glenn, Daryl, a sulky Merle, an older man called Dale and two girls he'd been travelling with, Andrea and Amy.   
  
"This thing is so whacked," Glenn muttered. "I mean, the dead are walking and...like..where did it even start? _Why_ did it even start?"   
  
"Reminds me of the time I went huntin' in the woods for squirrel," Daryl said. "Saw a chupracara."  
  
Rosie's head snapped up and she looked strangely at him.  
  
"A chupracarbra? A blood sucking dog?" T-dog sniggered. "You believe in a blood sucking dog?"  
  
"You believe in the dead walkin' around?" Daryl huffed back. "Yeah, that's what I thought," he muttered as the group fell quiet. "Don't seem so ridiculous now..."  
  
Shane turned to Rosie, a playful smile on his face. She cringed, knowing what he was likely to say.  
  
"You said you've had a lot of experience with monsters Rosie." He grinned. "Ever seen a chupacarbra?"   
  
Rosie sighed and liked Shane a little less. He was clearly trying to taunt the man and he had no idea what was really out there.  
  
"No, never seen a chupracarbra," she said, pausing as she watched a mocking smirk appear on Shane's face. What the hell? The world had gone to shit, right? So she might as well go all in for crazy... "I had a friend who went up against one once though. Sneaky little fuckers they are. Dude damn near died."  
  
"What?" Shane frowned as his face fell. "Are you serious?"  
  
Rosie nodded. "I don't joke about shit like that."  
  
"A chupracarbra?" Shane reiterated.  
  
"Yes," she said. She could feel Daryl's gaze on her, those deep blue eyes penetrating her very skin.   
  
"When you said monsters, what did you mean?" Shane asked, giving her a dubious look.  
  
"I don't really want to answer that question," she said irritably.  
  
"Why?" Daryl grunted.  
  
"Because they're all less likely to believe me, and therefore you, about the chubracarbra," she explained, somewhat begrudingly.  
  
"I don't need their belief. I know what what I saw," Daryl said. Rosie was quietly impressed with his conviction.   
  
"So, monsters, tell us..." Glenn said, nudging her encouragingly.  
  
"Fine. But you won't believe me," Rosie huffed.  
  
"Like Daryl said, the dead are walking around...try us." Glenn shrugged.  
  
Rosie took a deep breath. "Okay." She nodded before launching into an extensive list. "Vampires, werewolves, wendigo, ghosts, tricksters, djinn, gods, demons, angels-"  
  
"Angels?" Lori interrupted. "Since when were angels monsters?"  
  
"I'm betting since about the time God left heaven and didn't come back," Rosie said nonchalantly. "Angels don't do well without orders. They do their best but usually end up following some idiot who's hung up on their own warped interpretation of God's word. They're like fundamentalists, with a shit ton of power and heavenly strength. Some of them aren't too bad. One in particular but that's a whole other story, available in print and for free online if you know where to look." She sniggered at her own little joke, feeling the closest to tears she'd been since the whole world died.  
  
Lori looked slightly worried, but more for Rosie's mental health than anything else. Rosie groaned internally, knowing exactly what she was thinking.   
  
"Anything else?" Andrea asked. "Not that you can prove it now since the dead started walking." She scoffed and fell quiet as she registered the grimace on Rosie's face. "What?"  
  
"Well, whatever this is...it's spreading to the monsters as well. They aren't just dying and you can't kill them with a headshot like you can most of these things..." Rosie shrugged and looked apologetically around the group.  
  
"So how do we kill them?" Glenn asked.  
  
"I don't know. I'm assuming we just have to kill them the usual monster way and the walking dead way," she said.  
  
"Assuming?" Glenn frowned.  
  
"Well, I haven't come across an undead monster yet, so I haven't been able to test the theory," she sighed.   
.  
"Where did you come from, before all this?" Shane asked after a quiet few minutes.  
  
"Not the psych ward, if that's what you're asking," Rosie said.   
  
"No. I was just wondering what you did before the world ended?" he said.   
  
Rosie chewed on her bottom lip. "I was in Miami on a case. I was dealing with a woman in white..."  
  
"What's a woman in white?" T-dog asked.  
  
Rosie scrunched her face up, not really wanting to tell them. "It's the ghost of a woman who killed her children and then committed suicide after finding out her husband cheated on her."  
  
"Oh..." The group fell silent again for a few seconds.   
  
"What were you doing before that?" Shane said.  
  
"Hunting a witch," Rosis said.  
  
"A witch?" Shane reiterated in that same disbelieving tone.  
  
"Yep." Rosie held back the irritated huff that wanted to go with it.   
  
"Is it worth asking what happened before all that?" Shane said, worried about the answer.  
  
"Probably not," Rosie mumbled. "Before the witch I was dealing with a demon, before the demon it was a wendigo, then a shtritega, then a few ghosts all on the trot, found a stray leviathan, a nest of vamps, a werewolf, a shapeshifter...the list goes on..."  
  
"How in the hell d'you end up doing all that stuff?" Dale frowned. "You're so young. It doesn't seem right."  
  
Rosie cleared her throat and shook her head. She was not ready to share that story. "I'm twenty nine. It isn't that young."  
  
"Still, how d'you manage to get into...monsters?" Amy spoke up.   
  
"It's the family business," Rosie mumbled.  
  
"The family business?" Ed scoffed. "You mean your whole family are a bunch of kooks?" He sniggered and shook his head.  
  
Before anyone could jump down his throat or try to half-heartedly defend her, Rosie had taken a breath and nodded. "Pretty much, yeah..." To be fair, she wasn't actually lying. The job had taken it's toll and you can't see the things they'd seen or go through the things they'd been through without it having some sort of psychological effect.   
  
"Where are your family now?" Lori asked quietly.  
  
"Kansas," Rosie said. "They're moving this way. I texted our co-ordinates when we got here."  
  
"But all the connections are down. The networks are all dead. How'd you manage that?" Shane said with a frown.  
  
Rosie winced. "Hunting monsters isn't exactly lucrative...we learnt a good bit of hacking and my brother's a bit of a whiz with a computer so...we've been piggybacking off the satellite systems for years. It's not like we can pay a monthly tariff for a phone or afford to top one up every few weeks, and we need to keep our numbers in case anyone is trying to reach us with a problem. Not to mention the times we had to be...uh...persons of offical standing...?"   
  
"What's that supposed to mean?" Ed huffed.  
  
"They impersonated officers of the law, right?" Glenn said, looking at Rosie with a smirk.  
  
"Right," she said, smiling back at him.  
  
"You know that's illegal?" Shane grumbled.  
  
"Yeah well, it's not like you can just walk up to a detective and say, hey that murder wasn't committed by a person, you're looking for a ghost and the only way to stop it is to dig up their bones then salt and burn them." Rosie shook her head. "Would you have listened or would you have had us committed?"   
  
Shane grumbled something and shrugged.  
  
"So, if ya don't get paid for it, why do it?" Daryl asked, frowning at her. "Don't seem like a safe job or one with much thanks...so why?"  
  
Rosie shrugged. "Someone's gotta do it. I suppose it's just the way we were raised. We don't know anything else, it's in our bones."  
.  
"How'd you survive if you weren't getting paid?" Glenn asked. "I mean, it's not like you can hold down a real job, is it?"   
  
"Credit card fraud and pool hustling," Rosie said unabashedly.  
  
"You're a criminal," Shane blurted. "You saved our lives, you've saved a lot of lives, but you're a criminal..."  
  
"Not all criminals are bad people," Rosie huffed. "Some of them are just blessed with the sheer dumb luck of being born to some questionable people."  
  
"Amen to that sister," Merle mumbled, the first words he'd spoken all evening.  
  
"So, your parents? They were questionable?" Shane said, looking as though he was trying to work out how Rosie had ended up where she did, doing what she was doing.  
  
"They are not up for discussion," she said, shutting him straight down.  
  
"You got any siblings?" Glenn asked. "I've got two sisters... _had_ two sisters." He swallowed the obvious lump in his throat.  
  
"Sorry," Rosie said quietly. "I've got two brothers, three if you count my unofficially adopted one. Dean's the oldest, he's six years older than me. Sam's nearly three years older than me, technically we're half-siblings. I was a shock, that's for sure." She let out a small laugh. "Castiel is the adopted one. He's older than all of us but he's been family for so long now it's hard to remember a time when he wasn't with us."  
  
"Castiel is a strange name," Glenn mused.  
  
"Well...he's an angel..." Rosie confessed.  
  
"An angel?" Lori looked like she was two seconds away from losing it.  
  
"Yeah," Rosie said.  
  
"An angel is like a brother to you? What makes you so special?" she frowned. "Why not the rest of us?"  
  
"I wasn't so special," Rosie said. "It's my brothers. Dean was the Archangel Michael's vessel and Sam was Lucifer's vessel. They were supposed to fight and bring about the apocolypse like at the end of the bible."  
  
"Is that what this is?!" Shane growled.  
  
"No, this is Asmodeaus screwing shit up," Rosie grumbled. "He's a Prince of Hell. Sam and Dean stopped the apocolypse. Well, the one that was scheduled at least."  
  
"So you do know what happened?!" Shane snapped.  
  
"I never said I didn't. I just asked you what made you think I knew..." Rosie took a deep breath. "It's a demonic virus. Asmodeaus tweaked it and made it more powerful and stronger than it was before. He lost control of it and he's dead now so he can't fix it."  
  
"Well how do we fix it?" Glenn cried.  
  
" _We_ can't, at least not yet. We kind of just have to wait it out. See what everyone else comes up with. This thing, it's taking everyone and everything. The angels will be trying to find a cure, the demons will be too. I really don't know if there is one, but there's nothing we can do right now other than survive." Rosie gave them a sympathetic smile as she looked around at them all.  
  
"You've faced worse than this though, right? I mean, if for arguments sake I believe you, you've saved the world from one apocolypse before, right?" T-dog looked at Rosie hopefully.  
  
"Well, we usually manage to stop them before things get this bad..." Rosie couldn't bear to look at the group.  
  
" _Them_? How many apocolypses have their been?!" Glenn looked more than mildly panicked.  
  
"Uh...this would be the fifth I think?" she muttered, trying to remember how many times they'd stopped the world from ending.   
  
"So...you and your brothers have saved the whole world at least four times already?!" Glenn was astounded. "What happened those times?!"  
  
"Well, there was the biblical apocalypse. Then there was the time that the King of Hell opened purgatory and all the leviathan escaped, and then they planned to fatten us all up and keep us like cattle so they could eat us. And after that was the Darkness, which turned out to be God's sister. That was around the time the sun turned red for a few days," Rosie said.  
  
"Oh I remember that!" Glenn said.  
  
"Yeah...and then, the last one was where Lucifer had a son and he was so powerful that he accidentally opened a rift in time and space, which led to another world and the Archangel Michael from that world wanted to invade this one and overtake it with his legion of angels," Rosie finished.  
  
"How long ago was that one?" Shane mumbled.  
  
"About a year ago. They're getting more and more frequent. Makes me think that maybe the world would just like to die..." she sighed and shook her head.   
  
"It sure feels that way right now darlin'," Merle drawled.  
  
"Yeah, it sure does." Rosie nodded and stared deep into the glowing embers of the fire. She listened to the conversations around her and tried to concentrate but honestly, she'd checked out a long time ago. Her mind was with her brothers, hoping and praying that they were still okay. 


	2. Chapter 2

Sam sighed and stared at the phone in his hand. He shook his head and put it back in his pocket, turning to face Dean.

"So that went down well then," he scoffed.

"She's gonna regret that if those are the last words she ever says to me," Sam grumbled.

"What did she say?"

"Well fuck you too then," Sam reiterated.

Dean sniggered. "Yeah, she ain't gonna regret that."

Sam couldn't help the smirk that made it's way onto his face as he shook his head. Dean was right, there was no way Rosie would regret it. Hell, if someone told her those would be her last words to him she'd probably shrug her shoulders and say it again.

"What do we do now?" Sam asked.

"We go find her," Dean said.

"What about mom? And Cas?" Sam looked at Dean, wondering what his brother was thinking.

"Well, I'm sure mom'll come with us," Dean said, not exactly confident about that.

"And Cas?"

"We'll leave him a note or something, tell him where we're going. I don't know where the hell he's got to anyway but it ain't like he hasn't got wings."

"Yeah, okay," Sam said with a nod. "I'll go pack a bag, meet you in ten?"

"Sure," Dean said. "I'll go talk to mom."

Sam nodded again and walked off towards his room. Dean sighed and headed to Mary's room, not really sure how it was going to go. It wasn't that his mom didn't care, but since Amara had brought her back from the dead, Mary and Rosie's relationship had been strained, to say the least.

Dean knew it was hard for his mom, seeing that the love of her life had fathered another child with another woman. But she didn't know the whole story, she had no idea where Rosie had come from and what she'd been through, and because Rosie was stubborn as hell she refused to let anyone tell her.

Dean supposed Rosie wouldn't have been so against the idea if Mary hadn't taken Rosie's existence as a personal insult, giving the girl the cold shoulder from the minute she laid eyes on her and discovered who she was.  
He wondered down the hall and towards his mother's room. He knocked and waited for a reply, opening the door when he heard her answer.

"Hey mom," he said, shuffling a little.

"Hey Dean, what's up?" Mary asked.

"Well, we finally managed to get hold of Roe," he said, watching as her shoulders tensed and she stilled slightly. "She's stuck in Georgia, so me and Sam are gonna go on a little road trip and try to find her..."

"What?!" Mary whirled round, eyes wide.

"Dean, I know she's your...sister," she tried really hard not to scrunch her nose up at that thought, "but that doesn't mean you should be sacrificing yourself to save her!"

"She doesn't want us to go," Dean said, his heart aching a little at the persistent dislike his mother and sister had for one another. "She told us to stay here and stay safe-"

"Well she obviously wasn't very convincing, was she?" Mary bit back.

"Mom! You know as well as she does that when we've made our minds up, there's not a lot anyone can do to stop us!" Dean argued.

"We love her. We can't just leave her out there alone!"

"It's halfway across the country Dean! It's hundreds of miles, through dead bodies walking!" Mary looked exasperatedly at him. "I can't lose you...not again..."

"And I can't lose her Mom, I'm sorry..." Dean whispered, tears in his eyes.

"Please Dean? Stay? Let her come to us?" Mary pleaded.

"Mom, if I was out there and she was in here, what would she do?" Dean asked. He stared at Mary as she paused and looked at the ground in sad defeat. "What would she do mom?"

Mary shook her head and clamped her eyes shut.

"Mom? What would she do?" Dean asked again, slowly and with added intent. "I know you don't like her, I know you don't get along, I know how you feel about her but...you do _know_ her, and you know what she'd do if I was out there..." He let out a puff of air and shrugged. "What would she do?" He needed Mary to answer him, to acknowledge that his baby sister would never have holed herself up in the bunker and left him alone out there. "Mom?"

"She'd have left already," Mary murmured. It was the only thing she liked about the girl; how close and protective she was with her brothers.

"We're leaving in ten, are you staying here or are you coming with us?" Dean asked.

"I'm coming with you," Mary sighed. "I can't just watch you walk out of here and do nothing..." She shook her head again and looked back up at Dean. "If you're going, so am I."

"Okay," Dean said with a nod. He turned and walked out of the room, going to gather his things.

  
All three of them jumped in Baby and Dean started her up, pulling out of the bunker's garage. None of them had really been topside in nearly two weeks, so they only had the pointed lack of media updates to illustrate the state of the world. They didn't know how many were still alive or where anyone was. Dean didn't want to risk getting too close to built up areas but they needed to see what the world was like and what was happening.

As evening began to descend Dean decided to pull in on the outskirts of the nearest city; he got the feeling that driving around in such a loud car (much as he loved her) wouldn't be the most sensible thing to do.

"Come on," Dean murmured as he got out of the car. "Stay close." He nodded at the partially-deralict superstore he'd parked in front of. "Let's just do a quick supply run, get a feel for the place and then we'll get the hell out of dodge, okay?"

Sam and Mary both nodded, looking warily around the place. The superstore was called Cloud 9, part of a chain of stores just like it. It had enough of everything for the Winchesters to get what they needed and get out before night fell, allowing them just enough time to find some kind of shelter should they need it.

Dean headed for the main door, finding the whole place deserted. He whistled into the empty space, waiting for anything dead or alive to show itself. Shaking his head he motioned for Mary and Sam to duck through the door and together they started sorting through what was left of the already looted shop.

"I got some food stuff back here," Sam called, waving a few tins and some cereal boxes.

"I got toilet paper!" Dean cried happily. "We gotta grab as much of this shit as we can. Future Cas told me to hoard it like it was gold."

"Future Cas?" Mary frowned.

"Yeah, I went to the future," Dean said. "It was the one where Sam said 'yes' to Lucifer and didn't manage to control him long enough to jump in the pit."

"Right..." Mary said, nodding and wondering away to see what she could find.

Dean continued mooching around the store, turning a corner and seeing the gun counter.

"Alright! Jackpot! Well, sort of..." The counter was smashed and most of the guns had been taken, even the ammo was pretty much gone, but there were still a few useful bits left. Dean grabbed a bag and started chucking whatever he could find inside it. He was so busy grabbing stuff, he almost missed the click of a heel on the tiled floor.

"Get out, now." A small woman with long brown hair was stood pointing a shotgun at him. Her eyes were bright and fierce but Dean could see the slight tremor in her hand.

"Or what?" Dean said, pulling his gun on her so fast she didn't have time to react.

"Or I'll shoot you," she hissed.

"Really?" he scoffed. "What's that gonna do? Except kill everyone within a two mile radius."

Amy wavered, not sure what to think. The guy had a point, albeit an irritating one.

"Look darlin' I'm not the one with the trembling hands," Dean said, motioning to her gun as it shook slightly. "I shoot you, you go down and I run fast, I get out alive. You shoot me, I get pissed because that shit hurts, I chase you 'cause I'm pissed and when I'm pissed I get stupid, the dead come running and both of us are still here fighting, we get eaten alive..."

Amy thought about his words and shook her head. "It's not the dead I'm worried about around here," she said.

"What?" Dean frowned, lowering his gun a little. "What d'you mean?"

"The military," Amy said with a whisper, fear evident in her eyes. "The living...they are so much scarier than the dead."

Dean's eyebrows shot up to the top of his forehead. "What's going on with the military?"

Amy shook her head. "Not here." She motioned to the back door and gestured for him to follow.

"My mom and my little brother are still in the store," Dean said.

"I know," Amy said, her eyes resting on his. Her gun was no longer pointed at Dean, instead it was hanging loosely by her side.

Dean had tucked his back into his waistband. "It's cool, we can leave if you want-"

"You won't get out of town, not now," she said. "They're patrolling every night, they'll shoot you on sight."

"What?" Dean's blood ran cold.

"I heard your car pull up," she said. "Does it stand out? Will they notice it?"

"Hell yeah," Dean answered.

"You need to move it," Amy said. "If they see it, they'll hunt you down and you'll end up getting my people killed."

"Wait...there's more of you?" Dean asked. "How have you managed to evade them all for so long?"

"You'll see," Amy said. "Go move your car and round up your family. I'll wait here."

Dean narrowed his eyes at her, taking in the way she stood and the no-nonsense attitude she seemed to have. There was something about her that he couldn't seem to distrust so he simply sighed and went to do as she'd asked. Sam frowned at him as he went, but stayed where he was until Dean returned. He motioned for both Sam and Mary to follow him, introducing them to Amy as she led them through the back of the store and towards the manager's office.

"Before the world went dark I wanted to lay seige to company policy and put a new video game back for myself, you know, so I could pay for it after my shift and play it the day it was released," Amy explained, opening what looked like a door to a cupboard in the wall. "On our quest to find a way to do just that, we discovered an old storage room full of recalled products that everyone had forgotten about." She motioned for the three of them to climb in.

Sam looked at Dean skeptically; Dean sighed and shook his head, climbing in. Mary followed him and Sam went last, closely followed by Amy.

"When the military started shooting everything up, a bunch of us were already here. Some of us were lucky enough for our families to come find us and we hid in the walls while the soldiers raided the place and killed anyone still alive," Amy said, continuing on with her story. "I was one of the lucky ones. My ex-husband and my daughter came to find me."

"So you've just been living behind here the entire time?" Dean asked.

"Yeah, pretty much," Amy said. "It's a department store. When the soldiers had gone we looted the place and brought as much as we could back here. The soldiers took all the guns,  back when they first fenced us in and called it quarantine, but some of us were smart enough to grab a few pieces in case we needed them."

"So how many others are here?" Sam asked.

"There's nine of us all together," Amy said.

"How come there was a welcome party of one then?" Mary said, looking back at Amy with a frown.

"Well, at the moment, the security feed is still up and running, and Garrett rigged it so we could watch from back here. We saw you split up and put your weapons away," Amy said. "They all would've been watching us the whole time. I'm surprised Jonah didn't come bursting through the walls when you pointed your gun at me."

"Who's Jonah? He your ex-husband?" Dean asked.

"No..." Amy went strangely silent. "He's my very new boyfriend..."

Dean snickered. "Wow. Now that doesn't sound awkward at all."

"Shut up," Amy muttered. "I could have just shot you."

"Why didn't you?" Sam asked, glancing at her over his shoulder.

Amy shrugged. "He didn't shoot me."

  
A few minutes later and they came to the storage room that Amy had told them about. Dean walked through first, raising his hands as two men aimed guns at his head. Mary and Sam followed Dean's lead.

"Put those down," Amy huffed, leaning her own shotgun up against the wall.

"What d'you bring them back here for?" Adam asked, glaring at her and the three strangers.

"They'd have been shot on sight if I'd left them there," Amy said. "They feel like good people, okay?"

"He pointed a gun at you," Jonah said, nodding at Dean.

"Yeah! Because I was pointing one at him!" Amy argued.

"Why would you lead total strangers back here," Dina said, looking at the Winchesters with suspicion.

"Because! It's not going to be long before we run out of food and water," Amy sighed. "We are never going to make it outside of these walls alone. They can help us."

"How'd you know that?" Dina asked.

"They point weapons with a steady hand but they don't shoot first," Amy said. "Green eyes could have shot me any time he wanted but he didn't. He chose not to. There aren't many people left who choose not to shoot."

"My name's Dean," Dean said, dropping his hands. Again, Sam and Mary followed his lead.

"Hey!" Adam cried. "Did anyone tell you that you could move?!"

"Dude, if you were gonna shoot us we'd be dead already," Dean said.

"Just because I'm not quick on the trigger, doesn't mean I won't," Adam growled.

"Adam!" Amy snapped. "Cut it out. We're gonna need them, whether we like it or not."

Dean scoffed and turned towards Amy. "No offence darlin' but we're not stopping. We're looking for someone, we're headed to Atlanta."

"Atlanta?" Garrett scoffed back. "Man, they napalmed half the city. This whole thing started over that way somewhere."

"Our sister is with a group of people camped out not far from the city," Dean explained. "I know she's still there and she's still alive. We have to find her."

"And I get that," Amy interupted, "but you aren't getting out of this city in the muscle car you pulled up in while the military are patrolling every few hours. How the hell you got this far is beyond me..."

"We've been holed up in a bunker in Kansas for the last two weeks," Sam said. "Other than knowing about the virus, we don't know much of anything."

Amy took a deep breath and raised an eyebrow. "Well, you've missed a lot, that's for sure."

Jonah nodded and lowered his gun. "Yeah, it's a long story. You might wanna take a seat for this..." He gestured to a make-shift seating area towards the back of the room.

Dean, Sam and Mary all walked forwards and settled themselves on various different cushions and pillows.

"So," Amy started, "the infection got out and ended up spreading. It spread faster than anyone expected it too, including all the doctors, the Government...everybody."

"They sent out military task forces to fence off built up areas and create quarantine zones in an attempt to keep people safe and stop it spreading even more," Jonah continued. "They still had no idea how it was carried, only that if someone was bitten or close to death, they'd re-animate and start feeding on anything still living."

"So, they picked quarantine zones that had gone mostly untouched by infection, cornered it off and set curfews for those still inside," Adam joined in.

Amy couldn't control the wobble in her voice as she spoke again. "Then they took arms and walked street by street and house by house, shooting anything that dared to move outside of the quarantine zones."

Sam swallowed slowly. "This store is outside a quarantine zone, right?"

Amy nodded. "We're still pretty close to one though, which is why this area is still patrolled."

"We avoided all built up areas the whole drive over here," Dean said. "We only came close to the city now 'cause I needed to know what sort of state the world was in and 'cause we were getting low on supplies."

"Well, looks like your stuck here now. At least until we find a way out of here," Adam said, stashing his own gun and giving up on the hostility.

"Thanks," Sam said. "And in that case, I suppose you oughta know, my name's Sam. This is our mom, Mary. And Dean already told you his name..."

"I'm Amy," Amy said. She went around the room, introducing them to Adam (her ex), Jonah (her new boyfriend), Emma (her daughter), Kelly, (Jonah's ex), Garrett (a friend and co-worker), Glenn (her manager), Jerusha (his wife), and Dina (her best friend and deputy manager). The boys and Mary all nodded and smiled, particularly as Garrett added in the colourful little details they needed in order to make the whole ordeal interesting.

"Well, it's nice to meet you folks." Sam smiled, inclining his head slightly.

Amy couldn't stop the odd little chuckle that slipped past her lips. "We get how funny it looks."

Dean grinned. "Like something from a late night sitcom."

"Yeah, I'm also pregnant by the way," Amy said with a grim smile. "The baby is Adam's. And Dina is pregnant with Glenn and Jerusha's baby, she's a surrogate."

"Wow," Dean said, trying not to smirk and failing. "You couldn't write that shit."

"You certainly couldn't," Amy said, also smirking a little. The tension in the room broke as everyone started giggling amongst themselves.

Dean looked curiously at them all.

"If you don't laugh, you cry," Kelly explained with a small smile.

Dean nodded, smiling back.

The Winchesters decided to hunker down at the store for the night and reassess their situation in the morning. Dean lay back looking at the ceiling and trying to think of a way out, a way to keep moving towards Atlanta without being killed. He drifted off eventually, managing three of his four hours for the week.

  
Amy found Dean the next morning, crouched on the roof doing some re-con.

"You didn't sleep much last night," she said, lying on the floor next to him and pretending to be dead.

"Never do," he muttered.

"They patrol every two to three hours," Amy informed him. "Helicopter flies over head at 10am, 2pm and 8pm."

"So you've done your research," he said.

"Kelly did actually," Amy said, glancing up at him.

"Kelly...she's the blonde chick your boyfriend was shacked up with before you, right?" Dean asked.

"Yep," Amy said with a sigh.

"How come she did the scouting missions?" Dean said, his brow furrowed.

"Honestly? I think she just wanted to get away from everyone," Amy admitted. "I mean, you can't blame the girl."

"No, you can't," he agreed.

"So, anything else you looking for?" Amy asked. "Or can we go inside now?"

"We can go inside," Dean sighed, groaning as he stood up and walked back indoors with the store supervisor.

"Come on, everyone else is up and they're all ready for breakfast." Amy smiled as she led Dean back through the store towards the rest of the group.

Dean cleared his throat. "If you've done all the necessary re-con, why are you still hanging around?"

"Because there's no one in our group who's hand doesn't tremble when they're pointing a gun at someone," Amy said honestly. "Right now, my daughter is safe. My friends are safe. If we go out there...I don't know what's going to happen. But I do know that there's no one in our group who can pull a gun on someone and shoot them without hesitating."

"I hesitated when I pulled my gun on you," Dean argued.

"No, you'd assessed that I hadn't fired and because you're a good person, you chose not to fire too. That's very different to hesitating," Amy countered.

"I'm not a good person," Dean mumbled. "I haven't been a good person for a long long time."

"Well, you're good enough for me," Amy said. "You're good enough for this new world."

Dean merely grunted in neither an approving or disapproving tone. He rejoined the small group and nodded at Sam. He smiled at Mary and went to sit with her for a while.

"Have you called Rosanna yet?" Mary asked, always referring to her by her full name.

"No, and I don't plan on calling," Dean said. "At least for a few days."

"Days?! Dean, she could be dead by then," Mary whisper-hissed. "We could be leaving good people who need us for a dead girl-"

"Don't." Dean glared at her, cutting her off. "Don't Mom."

Mary took a deep breath and sighed, calming herself. "Dean, I get it-"

"No, you don't. You think you do and you say you do but you don't. Because if you did, you wouldn't be doing this. You wouldn't be trying to convince me to give up on her," Dean growled.

"I'm trying to convince you to be logical!" Mary cried quietly, still trying to keep their conversation to themselves. "You heard what they were saying about the military. And the hoards of dead...Dean, she doesn't stand much of a chance..."

Dean didn't want to hurt his mom. He really didn't. He'd hurt her enough already, inside her head trying to bring her back, but he needed her to hear him. He needed her to understand.

"Mom, she is the only person in my life who hasn't ever left me," Dean whispered, tears in his eyes. "She's the only one who hasn't ever walked away or given up or died on me. No matter how hard we fight, how much we disagree or how long it takes us to forgive one another for the stupid shit we've done...she's never left. She...I can't lose her...I can't stop trying...I can't give up..." A single tear fell from his eye and he wiped it away, knowing all the while that he'd made his mom feel awful. He didn't want to but he couldn't keep going with her always trying to persuade him to stop.

Mary nodded.

"I'm sorry Mom," he said softly.

"I know," she murmured. "It's just...you might be searching forever Dean. How're you going to know if it's in vain? How're you ever going to know if she's gone for good?"

"I'll know," Dean said firmly. "Trust me, I'll know. She'll make sure I know. Same as I'd do for her."

Mary nodded again and bit her tongue.

"So, how long are you guys sticking around?" Kelly asked, coming to sit with them out of nowhere.

Dean shrugged. "As long as it takes to get out of here without being killed."

"So, a while then," she said with a sympathetic smile. "You gonna take us with you?"

"Depends," Dean said.

"On what?"

"On whether you all wanna come with us," Dean answered. "Amy wants to leave, but that doesn't mean the rest of you do. I get where she's coming from, about supplies but...you are pretty safe in here. Safety isn't something all that easy to come by these days."

"No, but niether is sanity and I'm about climbing the walls at this point," she said with an amused little huff.

"I'll take whoever wants to come." Dean smiled and winked at her, grinning as Kelly blushed and looked at the floor.

"I, uh, I heard what you said about your sister," she mumbled.

Dean's smiled faded and he nodded as he swallowed the lump in his throat.

"She sounds pretty special," Kelly whispered. "I wish I had someone who loved me like that, you know? Someone who'd travel half way across the country in a terrifying apocolypse just to keep me safe..."

"Well, it doesn't come without it's shit," Dean chuckled softly. "We've had to endure more than most families, so it only stands to reason that our bond is that little bit tighter than most."

Kelly nodded. "I don't have much family. I had parents but...you know, the world ended..." She sniffed and shook her head. "I don't know if they're dead or alive. They lived too far away to come here."

"I'm sorry," Dean said. "Not knowing is just as painful."

Kelly nodded, taking a deep breath. "And my sister, well, I doubt you'd believe what happened to her but the dead are walking so you never know..." she sniggered a little sardonically.

"Try me," Dean said, nudging her gently.

"She was killed, by a werewolf," Kelly said, her eyes flicking up to his. She expected to see his disbelief all over his face but was instead met with deep compassion.

"A demon killed my both my parents," Dean told her. "My Mom came back from the dead, my brother did too after he took Lucifer to Hell. A family of immortal psychopaths killed my other little sister. Leviathan killed my stand-in father figure. Hellhounds got some of my first best friends. An angel killed another friend who was like a brother to me...the list goes on," he said, waving with his hand.

"You're a hunter," Kelly said, no question implied.

Dean saw the sadness in her eyes and shook his head. "Your sister got bit, didn't she?"

Kelly nodded. "She couldn't control it. She was only twelve at the time..."

"I'm so sorry," Dean murmured.

"It's not your fault," she said. "The man that did it, the hunter...I remember he looked almost as upset as I was."

Dean shrugged. "You feel all the ones you couldn't save."

"But you try, and not many people can say that," Kelly said, holding his gaze. "Don't get much thanks for it either, I bet."

"We don't do too badly," he said with a small smile. "The little people care. It's the big ones that don't like us, they're the ones that put us on Most Wanted lists and try to arrest us every chance they get."

Kelly chuckled. "Ain't that a bitch."

"Ain't it just," Dean chuckled back.


	3. Chapter 3

Rosie sighed and opened her eyes. There was no way she was going to get anymore sleep no matter how hard she tried. She rubbed her eyes and sat up, scooching around her tent quietly and peering out the opening.

The damn lookout was asleep, sat on top of the RV with a rifle in his hand. How useful. She groaned a little, stretching and crawling out of the tent. Sticking her hand back in, she grabbed her hunting knife, her machete and her favourite handgun. After fixing them all to her person she stood up and stretched again, spotting the youngest Dixon sat over by the small and dying fire.

It was still dark, no light yet visible and Rosie figured it must have been around five in the morning. Everyone was still sleeping, all except Rosie and the Dixon brother. It had been three weeks since they'd set up camp which meant it had been three weeks since she'd spoken to Dean. He'd text her a couple times, just to let her know he was also at a standstill for the time being, but not having heard his voice in so long was making her jumpy.

"Hey," she murmured, taking a seat next to the very quiet man.

"Hey," he grunted back, stoking the fire.

"You're up early," she said, leaning back a little on the log they were sat.

"Says the woman who barely sleeps at all," he scoffed.

"You noticed that, huh?" She smirked and he honoured her with a small smile.

"Maybe," he said, catching her eyes with his. The tiny flicker of flames at their feet made his eyes dance with a soft light and she found herself unable to look away.

The soft snore coming from the lookout broke whatever moment they were having and they both sniggered at the sound.

"He fell asleep couple hours after everyone went ta bed," Daryl said, nodding up at the guy.

Rosie laughed softly before realising what that meant. "Have you been awake _all_ night?"  
He shrugged. "Someone had to keep an eye out."

"I'm up now if you wanna get some sleep?" Rosie offered.

"Nah," Daryl said, shaking his head. "I slept last night. Which is more'n you can say..."

"Old habits die hard," Rosie sighed. "Sleep pattern of a hunter is hard to shake."

"A hunter?" Daryl frowned, feeling like her definition of hunter was different to his.

"Yeah, it's what we call ourselves," Rosie explained. She slipped off the log, getting closer to the fire, and wrapped her arms around her knees, starting to feel the chill of the cold morning air. "We hunt monsters, creatures, the supernatural...we're hunters."

"Mmm," Daryl said, slipping off the log to join her.

They stayed like that for a while, side by side in silence, shoulders barely touching. Rosie couldn't say it was normal for her, sitting in comfortable silence with another human being. There were only a handful of people she'd happened upon that could ease her enough that the quiet wasn't awkward or tense. She wasn't sure whether she was surprised or not by the fact that Daryl seemed to be one of them.

  
The quiet was broken by a loud whistle, making both Rosie, Daryl and the sleeping lookout jump feet.

"Fuck's sake Merle!" Daryl snapped. "Whatcha do that for?"

"Well helloo baby brother," Merle drawled. "I's just givin' the sleepin' fella with the gun a much needed wake up call." He smiled widely.

"Yeah, an' you probably woke up half the camp too!" Daryl huffed, scowling at his brother as he came over to join them.

"Well, looky looky," Merle snickered. "What do we got goin' on here? You two look mighty cosy..."

"Shut up Merle," both Daryl and Rosie said at the same time, using the same flat tone.  
Rosie smiled at Daryl as he looked down at her, amusement flickering in his eyes.

"Ah what? You gotta be kidding me!" Merle cried. "How come you got the only hot single woman on this godforsaken camp sight?"

"I'm gonna take that as a compliment," Rosie said with a smile.

"Well you shouldn't," Merle grumbled. "I did say ya were the only one."

"Merle," Daryl said, glaring at him.

"What? I didn't mean ta disrespect your old lady brother," Merle snickered.

"She ain't my old lady asshole," Daryl snapped.

"He's just jealous 'cause you can do something he can't," Rosie said.

"Pfft..." Merle wiggled his eyebrows at her. "Wanna bet darlin'?"

"Sure," Rosie said, twisting to face him and coming closer to Daryl in the process. She felt him freeze but ignored it, instead focusing on Merle and letting him relax again. "But what're we gonna bet? The world's fucked."

"How about you bet me a little physical appreciation?" Merle suggested, his whole demeanour switching to almost leecherous.

"Hell no," Daryl said before Rosie had chance to answer.

Rosie chuckled. "Yeah, that's a no. Just in case I've severely misjudged you and you do pull it off, I'm not setting myself up for that."

"Well, what d'you suggest?" Merle asked. He walked further towards the fire, sitting on the log adjacent to the one they were leaning against.

"How about...I'll give you a choice of weapon in the trunk of my car? You win, you pick anyone you like, bar my favourite five?" Rosie said.

Merle seemed to contemplate her offer for a second before nodding. "Now that's a deal I can shake on. What d'you get if I lose?"

Daryl turned his head slightly to look at her, still a little too close for his own comfort but he'd stayed nonetheless. He saw the question in her eyes and held her gaze again while he thought about it.

"You get a third 'o his secret stash o' booze," Daryl said.

Rosie hummed as she thought about it. She wasn't much of a drinker but since the world had gone down, she'd found herself liking the taste more and more. Daryl's eyes were still on her and she nodded.

"I'm game for that," she said, tearing her eyes away from Daryl's to look back at Merle.

Merle huffed and kicked a rock out from under his foot. He grumbled some more before reluctantly holding his hand out for her to shake. "Deal."

"Deal," she said as she shook it.

"So, what is it I gotta do, huh? What is it that Darylena here is so damn good at, you don't think I can do to?" Merle drawled.

"You gotta spend all day with me," Rosie said sweetly, "without being in anyway degrading or derogatory."

"That's a piece of piss!" Merle cried.

"That means ya can't hit on her, comment on how attractive you think she is, eye her up, pass any judgement on what she does and when she does it," Daryl explained, looking skeptically at his brother. "You can't cuss at her, you can't scoff or snicker at her, can't say anything sexist...basically you gotta not be you."

  
"Are you telling me that in all the time we've been here, my baby brother ain't made a pass at you once?" Merle asked with a frown.

"No, not once," Rosie said.

"There's somethin' wrong with you, brother," Merle sighed, shaking his head. "My blood starts boiling just lookin' at her. And I know I ain't the only one. Shane's tried it on with you a couple times, hell even that asian kid has goo-goo eyes for ya-"

" _Glenn_ does not have goo-goo eyes for me," Rosie huffed. Glenn stared at her sometimes, sure, but it had more to do with trying to work her out than anything else, she knew because she'd talked to him. There was no way in hell she was gonna get herself into that kind of mess, being a hunter was bad enough when it came to romance and relationships let alone factoring in this new waste of a world.

"Darlin' I'm just pointin' out that every other red-blooded male in this place has been lookin' at you," Merle chuckled, shrugging at Daryl. "You tellin' me you wouldn't wan' a piece of that?" He tipped his head towards Rosie and she felt her insides boil.

"She ain't a piece of meat Merle," Daryl growled, his cheeks dark and the tips of his ears turning pink.

Rosie snarled. "Just 'cause he can show some respect and restraint around a woman, doesn't mean there's anything wrong with him." She stood up and brushed herself off.

"Darylena, ya need ta learn how ta control ya woman," Merle laughed.

"She ain't mine Merle!" Daryl barked, forgetting how early it was. "She ain't no ones!"

"See, decent guy," Rosie said, gesturing to a thoroughly pissed off Daryl Dixon still sat on the floor and glaring murderously at his older brother.

"What's going on?" Shane asked, appearing from his own tent and walking up to the now almost dead fire. "I heard raised voices." He looked at Rosie. "You okay?"

"I'm fine, Merle's just about to get his ass beat," Rosie growled.

"Oh bring it on darlin'." Merle grinned, winking at her. "It would make my day to get down and dirty with you..."

"Ain't that the truth," Rosie said, scrunching her nose up in disgust, all her anger evaporating. "Something tells me fighting you would only get you off."

Daryl scoffed. "That's an understatement."

"So, what was happening?" Shane asked, confused now that all the temper and tension seemed to have melted away.

"Daryl here was movin' in on the lovely Rosanna," Merle snickered.

"Merle!" Both Daryl and Rosie glared warningly at him.

"He what?!" Shane's quick temper flared and he rounded on Daryl. "What did you do?!"

"He didn't do anything!" Rosie barked, turning on Shane and getting up in his face. "It was Merle I wanted to lay out, not Daryl!"

"Don't mean he wasn't being inappropriate too," Shane said, staring her down.

"Fuck off Shane. You're just worried that if he actually did he'd get a better reaction than when you tried," Rosie scoffed, folding her arms.

Shane scowled.

"Would he?" Merle asked the question Rosie knew Shane was desperate to ask.

She glanced over at Daryl who'd picked himself up off the floor and was now looking like he'd rather be anywhere else than here. His eyes met hers again and she sighed. "Probably," she said with a shrug, looking back at Shane. "But then he probably wouldn't tell me he was wound so tight that he needed to fuck me so hard I'd see stars."

Shane had the good grace to look ashamed. He bowed his head and nodded. "I did apologise. I was drunk."

"Then stop being so fucking possesive," Rosie bit back. "Just because _that_ didn't appeal to me, doesn't mean some other guy won't."

Shane growled and stalked off.

"You can take a fucking hike too," Rosie snapped at Merle. "Right after you tell me how in the hell you know my full name?"

"Your license is in your car," Merle said as he walked off. "I took a peek."

"You broke into Honey?!" Rosie shrieked.  
Merle waved her off as he carried on walking. "I didn't _take_ nothin'."

  
Rosie shook her head and turned back to Daryl.

"Why does he seem to think that makes it okay?"

"'Cause he's Merle," Daryl snorted.

Rosie sighed and rubbed her hands over her face. "What a great way to start the day..."

"I didn't know Shane'd come on so strong," Daryl mumbled, studying her as her eyes met his. Her eyes seemed to do that a lot lately, they seemed to do it instinctively.

"It was nothing I couldn't handle," Rosie said with a shrug.

"Ya shouldn't've had to handle it," Daryl grunted.

"I shouldn't have had to handle a lot but I have," Rosie answered.

After a brief pause Daryl looked up at her with an expression she'd yet to see on his face; a cheeky kind of smirk.

"What?" she said, feeling a little bit unnerved.

"Rosanna?"

"Oh shut up!" Rosie huffed. "My mom was into Toto, it was a miracle I wasn't called Africa."

Daryl snorted and his smirk broke out into a full blown smile. He laughed softly and Rosie found herself laughing along with him.

"You're such an ass," she muttered affectionately, shaking her head.

He placed his hands over his chest and feigned pain. "You wound me Annie..." he snickered.

"No," Rosie said, pointing her finger at him. "No one calls me Annie."

"They do now," he said, still chuckling. "Come on Annie, get ya gun. We're goin' huntin'." He walked away towards his tent, no doubt to pick up his crossbow.

"Daryl I'm serious!" Rosie hissed, running after him. "Don't you dare start calling me Annie!"


	4. Chapter 4

Another week later and Dean was still stuck in Cloud 9. Four weeks total since he'd last spoken to Rosie and he was going out of his mind. He knew she was still alive but it still hurt, not having heard her voice. Dean was also getting twitchy. The Bunker was the only other place he'd ever spent longer than a couple weeks, tops, and it was probably thirty times bigger than this tiny little back room.

"You okay?" Kelly asked, coming to sit with him in the corner of the room.

"Yeah, fine," Dean said, nodding and fiddling with the ring on his finger.

"You sure?"

"Just feel like I'm going a little bit insane," Dean sighed, shaking his head.

"Yeah, it is a bit stuffy in here," Kelly said.

"You any closer to finding a way out?"  
Dean shrugged. "The helicopters are still flying but the patrols have stopped. Makes me wonder why..."

"You think they've been overrun?" she asked, frowning. She'd been chatting to Dean quite a lot over the past few weeks, it was nice having people around who didn't seem so opposed to her presence. She'd felt more than a little unwanted in those first few days they'd been alone, sometimes wondering if she could make a break for it on her own.

"I'm not sure, it's possible," Dean said. "It wouldn't surprise me, that's for sure."

"We could go take a look maybe?" Kelly suggested. "I wouldn't mind getting out of here for a bit."

Dean nodded, pushing himself to his feet. "Sounds like a plan."

The two of them told the rest of the group where they were headed, Sam and Adam volunteering to accompany them too. The group of four all left the store as quickly and quietly as they could. Dean led them to Baby, opening the trunk and tossing weapons at each of them.

"No shooting anything unless you have to," Dean said. "The last thing we want is to draw attention to ourselves, either from the dead or the living."

"Got it," Kelly said, nodding at him.

"D'you think you can get us to the quarantine zone?" Dean asked her.

"Sure," she said, surprised he'd looked at her to lead and not Adam.

"You said you did all the re-con," Dean explained, evidently having read her mind.

"I did."

"So, stands to reason you know the lay of the land better than anyone, right?" He raised his eyebrows at her in question.

"Yeah, I guess so," she said.

"Come on then, show us the way," he nodded towards the apparently empty street and new he'd made the right decision when she shook her head.

"The dead'll wake up if you walk the streets," she said. "I've seen it happen with the soldiers."

"So what do we do?" Sam asked.

"Walk the rooftops and run the alleyways between fire escapes," she answered.

The three men nodded and followed her lead.

She snuck down the side of the building and quietly climbed up the fire escape, her eyes flicking up to survey the street below every few seconds. Once on the rooftop it wasn't too much hard work to find a fairly safe trail to the supposedly safe zone. They came across three walkers in total which Sam and Dean dispatched with total silence and utter ease, making Adam realise with startling clarity that Amy had made the right decision to trust them.

Kelly scouted the area, pointing to a wire fence a few blocks away. "That's the quarantine zone. If we really wanna know what's going on we're gonna gave to get closer, we gotta go on the ground."  
Dean nodded, taking the lead and heading for the door into the abandoned building. Him and Sam led their small group down the stairs and towards the exit, taking out another three walkers on the way down. Dean opened a door leading into a side alley and gestured for the other three to follow him. He peered around the corner of the building, looking up and down the main street. It was pretty quiet, a few straggling dead but not much else. Dean whispered to the others, directing them to keep down, keep quiet and follow his lead.

He stepped into the street, moving slowly and silently towards the quarantine zone. As he moved he took out any and all walkers that approached him with the efficiency of an aged hunter. Sam, Kelly and Adam moved after him, Sam dispatching any other dead that came near them. As they reached the gates, they saw that the military hadn't exactly been overrun, it was more like they'd disappeared. Dean frowned, stepping up and opening the chain-link gate, peering around to see if anyone was still alive. Sam shut the gate behind them, confusion also marring his features.

"If the military weren't overrun, why'd they leave?" He looked at Dean who shrugged.

They walked through the streets, houses on either side. It looked like it could still have been lived in if it weren't so damn quiet. There were still cars parked in driveways and toys on front yards. Dean whistled into the eerily quiet street and was rewarded with the sound of a cocking gun.

"Can I help you?" A smallish blonde woman pointing a shotgun at Dean stepped out from beside a house.

"We were just checking out the area," Dean explained, his hands in the air. "Wondering what was happening and why the patrols had stopped."

"Where did you come from?" A younger guy with scruffy brown hair and a sort of squeaky voice stepped up beside her.

"We were camped out at Cloud 9, just a ways down the road," Sam said.

"How? Why weren't you brought here? This whole area was supposed to have been cleansed and quarantined," the guy said.

"If by cleansed you mean killed," Adam growled. "My fifteen year old daughter nearly got shot in the head when they starting _cleansing_ the area."

"What?" The blonde woman's face fell and the young guy looked a little green.

Dean shook his head. "I'm guessing they told you lot as much as they told these lot," he said, tipping his head at Adam and Kelly.

"Sounds something like that," the woman said, dropping her gun so it hung down beside her. "I'm Special Agent Jennifer Jareau, with the FBI."

Dean snorted. "Sweetheart, you ain't nothing but Jen now."

JJ glared and him and gripped her gun harder. "This is Spencer Reid. He's a Supervisory Special Agent. We got stuck here working a case, we're with the BAU."

"Behavioural Anaylsis Unit, right?" Sam said.

JJ nodded.

"I'm Kelly," Kelly said, giving her a small smile. "This is Adam, and these two are Sam and Dean. They're brothers..." Kelly hadn't seen Dean giving her a very subtle but pointed shake of his head in an attempt to get her to stop talking.

"Sam and Dean? You look familar," Spencer said, looking curiously at them. Dean knew the instant he'd figured it out as his face dropped and he stepped back, drawing his own gun on them. "Winchester. You're the Winchesters. You're on the FBI's Most Wanted list. _We've_ investigated you."

"The Winchester brothers?!" JJ cried, raising her shotgun again.

"Great," Dean muttered, holding his hands up again.

"Sorry," Kelly grimaced, "the FBI are big guys, aren't they?"

"Yeah, little bit," Dean huffed, rolling his eyes at the woman but letting her off all the same.  
"Look, we aren't who you think we are," Sam said slowly.

"You mean you're not Sam and Dean Winchester?" JJ asked, already knowing the answer.

"No, we are," Sam said, "but we're not the _people_ you think we are."

"So you haven't killed over a hundred people in some of the most gruesome ways we've ever seen?" JJ raised her eyebrows, daring them to disagree.

Dean growled and dropped his hands, shaking his head. "We don't have time for this."

"I will shoot you," she snapped.

"Then go the fuck ahead," Dean barked. "I don't have time to stand here and explain to you that our lives are drowning in the supernatural. That this shit you're all living now has been our lives since I was a kid. I'm on the FBI's Most Wanted list because people like you can't believe in monsters, so we have to deal with them and it ain't pretty."

"You're trying to tell me that all those people you killed were real life monsters?" JJ scoffed.

"Lady, the dead are walking..." Dean said flatly, gesturing widely with his hands. "I'm not sure you can argue that it's all in my head anymore."

JJ looked at him, her eyes narrowed. She was contemplating his words and the sincerity behind them. She could hear the exasperation in them, the tiredness, the utter exhaustion. She lowered her gun again.

"JJ?" Spencer frowned, not following her lead.

"He makes a good point," she said. "And we profiled them as being deeply co-dependant sadistic serial killers who don't stick to an MO and can't form bonds with anyone but each other."

"The co-dependant thing is spot on," Dean said. "I gotta to give you that."

"Dean!" Sam hissed.

"They've formed bonds with us," Kelly offered. "They've been nothing short of kind and helpful. They've kept us safe and helped find supplies for our whole group. Their Mom is with them too, but she's back at the store."

"Mom?" Spencer's frown deepened, stepping forwards and lowering his gun a little. "She died when you were three."

"Yeah, death doesn't really stick with our family," Dean said. "God's sister brought her back to life, she sort of had a little crush on me." He grinned, clearly pleased with himself.

"Dude, the feeling was mutual and it was something neither of you could help," Sam said, rolling his eyes at his idiot brother.

"You had a thing with God's sister?" Adam asked, not sure what or how to believe that.

"Something like that," Dean said with a smirk.

"Where's God now?" JJ asked, gesturing around them.

"He took a hike not long after the sun went red," Dean said, his irritation with the Lord clearly evident. "Claimed the world was better when he wasn't interferring."

JJ scoffed. "Yeah, this feels so much better."

"Tell me about it," Dean grunted. "Guy's an asshole."

"Dean!" Sam cried. "You can't say that about God!"

"Sure I can. I just did." Dean shrugged. "Come on, what's the worst that's gonna happen? I've already been to Hell."

JJ shook her head and sighed. "Okay, so, what are you doing now? Why're you here?"

  
"Me and Sam are looking for our sister, she's stuck just outside of Atlanta," Dean explained. "We were on the way to her when we got stuck at the store. We didn't know about the patrols and the quarantine, we were holed up in our Bunker in Kansas."

"D'you know what this is?" JJ asked.

Dean nodded and looked uncomfortably at Sam. "It's a demonic virus."

"A demonic virus?" Spencer said, his gun now safely holstered again.

Sam grimaced. "It, uh, it was derived from the Croatoan virus. Asmodeus, a Prince of Hell, got his hands on it and made a few upgrades. Only they got out of hand and...well...you've seen the result," he sighed, gesturing around the place.

"Is there a cure?" JJ asked.

"Not that we know of," Sam said.

"Great," JJ said, sighing as though all the hope she had just left her. "So what's been going on out there? We thought people were being evacuated to these quarantine zones. I had no idea they were..they were shooting people without reason."

"I think they were trying to stop the virus from spreading," Kelly said. "I heard more than a couple soldiers talking about the beginning and how awful it was. The virus is triggered by death or a bite from an infect. They didn't know who was a danger and who was harmless so the military and the Government just ordered them to shoot everybody."

"An infect?" JJ frowned.

"Short for infected," Sam said. "It sort of became our colloquialism for the walking dead."

She nodded.

"So, we came up here wondering what happened to the soldiers," Dean said. "We wanna hit the road again but we couldn't go anywhere until we knew how likely it was we'd get shot if we were seen."

"They all disappeared," JJ told him. "Just packed up in the night and left. Me and Spence sort of took on the running of this community. A lot of families left and headed elsewhere. There's not many left here but it's too many for us to just take off, at least till they're able to defend themselves."

"Kind of our gig at the minute too," Dean muttered.

"How'd you know your sister is still alive?" Spencer asked.

"We text each other everyday," Dean said.

"How? All the networks are down?" Spencer frowned.

"We hacked the satellites. They're still in space," Dean said nonchalantly.

"But the system updates they need to maintain themselves won't be sent, meaning that eventually they'll stop working anyway," Spencer explained. "You should come up with a plan b for when they do."

"Thanks," Sam said, nodding at him in appreciation. "I hadn't thought of that."

JJ looked around, seeing all the peering faces through curtain windows. "Come on, let's go further in. People are starting to get twitchy and the dead are already at the gate."

She nodded to a few groaning, moaning bodies that were pawing the fence.

"Sure thing," Dean said, taking his knife out of it's sheath and heading to the fence. He put down all the infected and wiped his knife on the leg of his pants, much like his little sister had done a few weeks ago at her own camp. "Let's go."

JJ blinked at him.

"They'd have drawn more attention," Dean murmured.

"It's not that," she said. "You didn't even bat an eye."

"I adjusted to this life long before it hit every fucker else," Dean said softly. "I've apologised enough for that already." He walked off after Sam and the other two, Spencer leading the way.

Once they got further inside, people seemed to flood from every direction. They wanted to know who the strangers were, where they'd come from and how they got there. Kelly and Adam chatted happily to them, enjoying the company of someone different. Dean supposed being cooped up with your pregnant ex-wife and her new boyfriend wasn't exactly all fun and games for Adam, either.

  
Dean and Sam spent the next few minutes discussing their own predicament with JJ and Spencer.

"We've gotta get moving, no questions," Dean said. "We can't afford to stay in the store any longer. It isn't safe."

"You can move everyone up here," JJ offered.

"We could use more experienced fighters, and there's plenty of housing to spare."

"That sounds like a plan," Sam said. "Those people stay stuck in that store and they're all gonna kill each other."

JJ nodded. "How soon can you move them?"

"Now there's no patrol, any time we want," Dean said. "We just have to make sure we're not spotted by the helicopter."

"Okay," she said. "You go get the rest of your people and we'll set up to receive you."

"Me and Sam aren't staying for good. Couple days maybe." Dean said, staring defiantly at her.

"Sure," she said. "A couple days is better than nothing."

Spencer shared a look with her and she shrugged. Dean decided not to comment, feeling that whatever it was they could figure it out once everyone was settled in. Sam stayed with Kelly in the quaratine zone, rolling his eyes when Dean told him there was no way he was letting anyone else drive Baby for the first time in four weeks. JJ opted to go with Dean and Adam, much to Spencer's despair. She wanted to assure the store group that the quarantine zone was safe for them, and she wanted to make sure they were all safe to be brought into the fold.

  
No more than a few hours later and the whole group from the store, plus any extra supplies they could get their hands on, were safely situated inside the chain-link fence. Dean had driven Garrett, Dina, Emma and the supplies through the streets while the rest used the same route the original four had. Dean, Sam, Amy, Adam, Jonah and Kelly were all standing in the kitchen to the house that JJ and Spencer were living in.

"So what happens now?" Amy asked.

"Now, me and Sam split to look for our sister," Dean said. "Anyone who wants to come with us can, but we're not sticking around here."

He flicked his eyes towards Mary, barely holding her gaze.

"Can I ask you a favour?" JJ said, staring up at him.

"Sure, doesn't mean I'm gonna do it though," Dean said.

"Call your sister," JJ said. "Hear her voice. Talk to her about leaving here and about what she's got going on where she is. There might not be much of a rush." Dean watched as she swallowed a lump in her throat. "If there's not, stick around for a bit. Just long enough to help me train these people to survive. I wanna come with you but I can't leave them all here unprotected and unprepared."

"What aren't you telling me?" Dean narrowed his eyes, that piercing green gaze diving deep into JJ's blue one.

"I have a husband and two kids still in DC. I need to find them. I need to try..." she said, her eyes glistening over.

"Your husband got a satellite phone?" Dean asked.

JJ nodded. "Yeah, we got one for emergencies. Why?"

Dean dug out the phone in his pocket and handed it to her. "Try calling. If they answer, I'll consider it."

JJ grabbed the phone and with shaking hands dialled Will's number. She found herself holding her breath when it actually started ringing.

_"Hello?"_

"Will?" JJ mumbled through tears. "Is that really you...?"

_"JJ?!"_

"Yeah, it's me. It's really me," she whispered, her cheeks wet and her breathing ragged.

"The boys?"

_"They're both here. They're both good. We were some of the first outta the city. Found ourselves in a walled up little town not too far away," he chuckled softly, his own tears muffling his voice a bit._

"You're safe?" JJ breathed happily.

_"Yeah, we're safe," he said. "You wanna talk to 'em? The boys would love to hear your voice..."_

"God yes I wanna talk to them," JJ said, sniffing loudly.

_"Mommy?"_

"Henry?" JJ laughed and cried all at the same time.

_"Mommy where are you? We miss you? What happened? We don't live at home anymore and we don't like it anymore and Daddy said we have to stay here but you're not here-"_

"Henry honey, I'm coming. I'm on my way, I promise. I got held up at work and then some bad things happened to the world. But Mommy's gonna come home. I promise I'll find you again..."

_"Mama..."_

"Michael!" JJ smiled, her eyes glazed over as she looked at the floor and focused on her youngest son's voice.

_"Miss you mama," he said._

"I miss you too sweetheart. I miss you so very much, but, guess what?"

_"You love us more?" Henry asked with a hopeful little giggle._

"Yeah sweetie, I love you more," JJ whispered.

 _"Come home soon JJ, please?" Will said, his voice trembling. "But be safe. Please be safe."_  
"I will," she said. "I love you Will. I love you so much. Take care of our boys and I'll be with you soon, okay?"

_"Okay. I love you JJ, see you soon," Will whispered._

"I don't wanna go..."

_"You're gonna have to darlin' if you're gonna keep all those promises..."_

"I know."

_"Bye sweet, see you real soon."_

_"Bye Mommy."_

_"Bye Mama."_

"Bye..." JJ broke down as the line went dead and Dean had to catch her as she fell, Spencer rushing towards her. Evidence of his own tears were all over his face and he held JJ tight as Dean passed her over to him.

  
Dean sighed and stood up, looking down at the phone. The whole room was silent, every single one of them had heard both sides of JJ's conversation even though she hadn't put her family on speakerphone. Dean groaned and started tapping away on the phone.

"Well, you're all about to hear a much less heartfelt conversation by the way," he said, the phone ringing in his hand. He figured he might as well use speakerphone since everyone would be listening anyway and this way Sam could talk to her too.

_"If you're calling to tell me you're dying I'm going to fucking kill you," Rosie snarled._

Dean wanted to snigger, watching all the wide eyes and raised eyebrows in the room.  
"No Roe, me and Sam are fine," he said.

_"Then what the fuck are you calling me for?! You gave me a goddamn heart attack bitch!" Rosie snapped._

"Freak!" Dean said, immediately responding out of habit. "Look, I'm calling to talk to you about our individual situations."

_"You mean about how the world's fucked and you refused to stay safe and then set out on some dumbass quest to find me?" Rosie huffed. "Merle! Put that down!"_

"Yeah...and who the hell is Merle? That sounds like some weird hick name?" Dean frowned.

 _"It kind of is," Rosie said, moving the phone away from her mouth a little to shout up the hill again. "Merle! I said put it down!"_  
_"You ain't the boss of me bitch!"_

Dean felt his shoulders tense and his hackles rise. "Roe, what the fuck is going on there?"

_"God, nothing Dean! Merle's just being Merle. He's an asshole, you get used to it," Rosie muttered._

_"I wouldn't be so much of an asshole darlin' if you'd just show me some lovin'" he cackled leecherously._

"Dean, just breathe," Sam said from beside him.

_"Merle!" Daryl barked. "Stop winding her up. You're gonna get more 'an yer fingers busted if_ _ya keep goin'!"_

"You busted the dudes fingers?" Dean asked in disbelief.

_"I dislocated them," Rosie said. Dean could practically hear her shrug. "I put them back after he stopped whining like a little bitch."_

_"Fuck you Rosanna!" Merle roared._

_"Oh screw you Merle! Go jack off in the woods somewhere, asshole!" Rosie yelled back._

_"I'm planning on it. Might even think of you while I'm doing it..." He made some crude and disgusting noises before howling in pain._

_"What the fuck was that for?!"_

"What happened?" Dean asked, torn between a laugh and a cry.

_"Daryl just shot him with his crossbow," Rosie said._

"Who's Daryl?" Dean asked.

_"Merle's little brother," Rosie said, not really wanting to explain much more than that._

"Right..." Dean wasn't sure how he felt about that.

_"Merle! For the last time, put that down!" Rosie cried exasperatedly. "You're not using my favourite knife to carve those lewd pieces of shit that you call statues."_

"Rosie, are there any other girls in your camp or are you the only one?" Dean asked, his tone a little tense. Sam snorted.

_Rosie huffed and rolled her eyes. "Yes there are other **women**. But none of them are all that good at telling Merle to go swing a cat."_

_"I'd swing you," Merle huffed. "I'd swing you off the top of a goddamn cliff." Merle's voice suddenly sounded very loud, like his face was pressed up against Rosie's head so his mouth was closer to the speaker. "Your little sister here has been a pain in my ass since the moment she got here-"_

_"I got here before you, numbskull," Rosie said, pushing him away._

_"_ _Exactly," Merle said, walking back towards the camp and starting a fight with Ed._

_"Oh for fuck's sake..." Rosie muttered._

"What now?" Dean asked. "Do I even want to know?"

_"A fight just broke out," Rosie sighed. "Daryl, go sort him out, will you?"_

_"I'm his brother, I ain't his babysitter," Daryl grunted._

_"I can tell you right now, being his brother makes you his babysitter," Rosie said._

_"Fuck off Annie," Daryl said, showing her his middle finger._

_"Screw you Dixie chick," she threw back._

_"Damn woman, how many times do I gotta tell you not to call me that?!" he huffed._

_"Apparently the same amount of times I have to tell you not to call me Annie," she said._

"Explain to me how the guy is still breathing," Dean said, bringing her focus back to the phone. "The last guy that wouldn't stop calling you Annie got a broken jaw."

_"I, uh, he's too useful. If I broke one of his limbs it'd be a waste," she said._

_"Yeah, you keep telling yourself that **Annie** ," Daryl snickered._

"'Cause that sounds convincing," Dean mumbled. "How come they all know your full name anyway?"

_"Cause Merle broke into Honey and found my only legit ID," Rosie grumbled._

"So how is he still breathing?" Dean asked.

_"Because he's Daryl's brother," Rosie mumbled again._

"So because the asshole is the brother of the guy you like-"

_"I do **not** like him!" Rosie hissed. "It isn't like that!"_

"Sure it's not," Dean said. Sam slapped him on the shoulder.

"Don't listen to him Rosie. He's just grumpy 'cause we've been cooped up in one room for four weeks with the same ten people," Sam said.

_"Shit. What poor people. I wouldn't wish that on anyone," Rosie said._

"Shut up," Dean huffed as Sam snickered.

_"So what about our precarious situations was it that you wanted to discuss?" Rosie asked._

"Well, we're still with the people from the store but we've sort of intergrated with another community," Sam said. "There's a couple people here who wanna come with us, they're trying to get back to their families in DC, but they don't want to leave this community unprepared and unprotected, so they want us to stick around for a bit and train up a few people. Show them the ropes and stuff..."

_"Ah...and Dean's doing his gung-ho shit where he huffs and puffs and feels bad about every decision he makes?" Rosie offered._

Sam laughed and Dean scowled.

"Something like that, yeah..." Sam said.

_"Sammy are you safe?" Rosie asked, the smallest tremor in her voice. "You and Dean? Are you safe?"_

"I'm not worried about being safe Roe," Dean said, the same tremor in his. "Are you safe?"

 _"For now, yeah," she said_.

"What's that supposed to mean? For now?" Dean frowned.

_"We're all safe for now," Rosie said. "You can't guarantee it's ever going to stay that way. No matter where you are, things can change and shit can happen. You know that Dean. It's like hunter 101."_

"Yeah, I know," he mumbled.

_"Come on man," Rosie said, a smile in her voice. "It's what we do. Saving people, hunting things, the family business. You gotta help them out if they need it. It's our job, no matter what."_

Dean sighed and shook his head, Sam's hand coming to rest on his shoulder.

"Roe..." Dean cleared his throat. He shook his head again and opened his mouth but no words came out. He saw his Mom walk through the door but barely registered her presence.

_"Dean...come on. You know it. No matter what. It's always been no matter what. We've paid every price there is to pay and we'll pay them all again, it's what we do," she said. "And it's not fair and it's not right and it shouldn't be on us but...it is. So we fight and we care and we try, and sometimes it costs us too much. Sometimes it costs me and sometimes it costs you, sometimes it costs us Sam or Kevin or Charlie or Bobby or Jo or Ellen but...we give up on that ethos and what do we have Dean?" Rosie croaked. "What did they die for? 'Cause the minute we become more important than anyone else, they all died for nothing..."_

"I know," Dean murmured, a silent tear tracking down his face. Sam wasn't fairing much better.

_"Good, because now you owe me two pull-it-together speeches," she said. "It was supposed to be my turn to wig out. Instead I've got to deal with you idiots over there and these assholes over here."_

"Roe...are they good to you? Are you safe with them?" Dean whispered.

_"...there's one or two that I feel almost as safe with as I do when I'm with you...? Does that make you feel better?" Rosie murmured._

"Who?"

_"I got Daryl and Glenn, Lori, Carol, Dale, Andrea, Amy, T-dog..." Rosie shrugged. "There's more but for the most part they're all good people. I am safe, as safe as I can get, and other than not being with you two chuckleheads, I'm happy. As happy as I'm ever gonna be in an apocolypse we didn't manage to stop."_

"Okay..." Dean said.

_"We'll find each other in the end," Rosie said softly. "We always do..."_

"I just don't want you to think we're giving up on you," Dean said. "I don't want to _feel_ like we're giving up on you..."

_Rosie scoffed. "Dude, we're genetically incapable of giving up on each other. Quit freaking out for five minutes bitch and remember...we always make it back to each other."_

Dean laughed softly. "Yeah, yeah, okay."

_"Great, so..."_

"So, I guess we should say goodbye?"

_"Yeah, whatever, see you soon bitch and try not to die before hand," Rosie said with a grin._

"Same to you. Bye Roe," Dean murmured.

_"Yo! Annie get yer gun! We're goin' hunting!" Daryl hollered._

_"Bye Dean, bye Sam..." Rosie murmured back. "I love you both."_

"Love you too Rosie," Sam sniffed.

"Yeah, love you too," Dean said, clearing his throat.

_"If you make me hang up, I swear to God Dean I'm gonna bitch slap you so hard..." Rosie huffed._

Dean laughed a little and hung up the phone. He sniffed and wiped his eyes before looking up at everyone. They seemed to be looking straight back.

"I'm fine," he said gruffly.

"Dean-" Mary said softly.

"I said I'm fine Mom." Dean cleared his throat and gave her a small smile. "I promise, I'm fine."

  
"What did she mean when she said 'apocolypse you didn't stop'?" Amy asked.

"We've stopped a few end of the world scenarios," Sam explained. "We tried to stop this one."

"We didn't try hard enough," Dean said.

"We're still trying," Mary spoke up.

JJ had recovered fairly well from her much needed breakdown and was now stood looking at Dean. "It sounds like you've lost a lot."

"Yeah, something like that," Dean grunted.

"You don't have to stay," JJ said quietly.

"Yeah I do," Dean sighed.

"No, you don't," JJ said again, staring him down.

Dean shook his head. "Yeah, I do."

"Why?" Spencer asked, frowning.

"You heard Rosie," Dean said with a shrug. "It's my job."

"But why do you have to do it?" Spencer said.

Dean shrugged. "'Cause if I don't do it, if we don't do it, no one else will."

"But why is that your problem?" Adam spoke up, also frowning at him.

Dean laughed and gave him a sardonic smile. "Because we were taught it was our problem too long ago to break the habit."

"No," Sam said, shaking his head at Dean. "You were taught that."

Dean glared at him. "Anyway, the point is, we're sticking around until we're all ready to leave," he said, looking at JJ.

She nodded and offered to show everyone their homes and introduce them to the rest of the small community. The main group took her up on it and they left the small kitchen, leaving Dean and Mary alone for a few minutes.

"Dean, you don't owe this world or these people anything," Mary said, stepping up to him.

"Mom, there's no way you're gonna undo all the shit Dad did in a few short sentences, so I wouldn't even bother trying," Dean said with a sigh.

"Dean...I never wanted this for you," Mary whispered, her heart breaking. "I wanted you to live a life free of pain and suffering. Free of terror and fear. Free of the hunter life."

"And I know that Mom," Dean said softly. "And I don't blame you. I don't even really blame Dad..." He shrugged his shoulders and sighed. "I was so young when you died Mom. I didn't stand a chance when Dad starting dumping all his crap on me..." Dean cleared his throat for the umpteenth time that day. "There are just some things you can't undo, and I can't undo the fact that the most important thing Dad taught me, the thing that he drilled into me, was that protecting other people was worth the cost of my life and my hopes and my dreams. Usually only mine."

"Dean..." Mary choked up.

"Hey, it's cool, I'm good. I'm over it." He looked at Mary and smiled again. "It's just something I have to live with now, you know? He never meant for it to go this far, he never meant for all the shit he threw at me to have this kind of an impact, it just did. I forgave him a long time ago, I'm not even sure he really understood what he did to me..." Dean shook his head and chuckled. "I just...whenever I want to do something for me, whenever I want to protect my own before I protect someone else's...that's when it hits. And it hurts no matter what decision I make."

"Dean, it shouldn't," Mary wept. "It shouldn't. You shouldn't ever have to feel that way..."

"But I do Mom," Dean said. "I do. And I know you don't want to hear it but Roe is the only one who understands it."

Mary looked sadly at him and shook her head. "What about Sam?" Her eyes pleaded with him, her frown felt confused.

"Sam took off for Stanford," Dean said. "And I don't begrudge him for it. I don't hate him for it. Hell, I was damn proud of him for it. But, he wanted to go and he did. I knew there was no way I even had a choice." He ran his fingers through his hair and gazed down at his Mom. He knew she didn't want to hear it, hell, he didn't want to say it, but she needed to. There was a lot she probably needed to hear that he hadn't said. "Rosie...she doesn't tell me I deserved better even though we both know it's true. She never tries to argue with me that it's not fair and it's not right, because she knows we're just gonna end up putting everyone else first anyway. She...she gets that it runs too deep. She looks at me and she knows, she knows she can scream till she's blue in the face that it shouldn't be that way but it is, and she can't change it. She gets it. And rather than save herself, rather than step back and watch, she threw herself, heart and soul, into it all with me."


	5. Chapter 5

Two and a half weeks later...  
  
Rosie stepped carefully through the brush, following the Daryl. He was tracking a deer he'd hit, but the bolt had only injured the animal and hadn't taken it down. The pair of them had been wondering through the woods, hunting anything that moved, for over a day now. Neither one of them had said a lot in that time, merely grunting and nodding to communicate. Rosie had to admit she relished the reprieve she felt being away from camp, thinking it was the best damn decision she'd made so far. Following Daryl had been a blessing in disguise, because not only did the man barely acknowledged her existence, he also never questioned her company.

It had been just over a month and a half since the world went to shit and she'd begrudingly joined Camp Crazy. Rosie was already crazy enough, and being cooped up with people who couldn't let go of civilisation was driving her even closer to the edge of sanity. She never realised how claustrophobic it felt, working a case and having to deal with _people_. Shane never made a decision before discussing it with her first (regardless of the pass he'd made at her) which put her second in the chain of command; and she _loathed_ it. She wanted to be off, searching for her brothers and heading in their general direction, but it was becoming more and more evident to her that she wouldn't make it alone, and these people weren't likely to make it without her, either.

And they all wanted to talk to her, make friends and build some kind of community or extended family. What was with that?! Rosie scrunched up her nose as she thought about it. It was why she'd jumped at the chance to run away with Daryl, so to speak. She quelled the giggle on her lips, knowing how much he'd hate to hear it said like that. The Camp was just getting too much for her; they wanted her to work and chat and _fit in;_ but that was something she'd never been able to do in her life. She wasn't sure what it was that made her seem so approachable or even open to the idea, no one bothered trying to include the Dixon brothers more than they had to, but then she figured that was one of the upsides to having a dick. Hell, if they'd watched her life like a movie, they definitely wouldn't be sitting so fucking close.

"We're almos' back ta camp," Daryl muttered, breaking Rosie from her train of thought.

Rosie nodded and hummed, her shoulders dropping slightly. She wasn't ready to go back yet. She could have used a few more days silence.

"You don't have ta come," he said softly. "I can say we got seperated? If you wanna run Annie, now's the time..."

Rosie blinked and looked up at him. "Thanks, but I can't."

"Why not? You don't owe these people anything," Daryl said, stopping as he turned to face her.

"Neither do you," Rosie said, accepting his challenge.

Daryl eyed her in contemplation. His lips were pressed tightly together and gaze narrowed. "I ain't huffin' and puffin' with the thought-a goin' back..."

"My phone is in my car and my car is at camp," Rosie said, ignoring the voice in her head that kept reminding her of the other reason she wanted to stay, most notably the surly redneck stood in front of her.

After a few more minutes, he nodded. "Fair enough," he mumbled, moving on.

Rosie sighed and carried on after him, looking at the ground and the path the deer had tracked through the undergrowth.

"Shit..." Daryl muttered.

Rosie looked closer and swore too. "Fucking hell, that's all we need!" She threw her arms up in the air and huffed.

"It's gonna chase it all the way back to camp," Daryl growled. "We gotta pick up the pace if we wanna catch it 'fore that geek does..."

"Ideally, we need to catch them both before they reach camp," Rosie said. "Everyone'll start freaking out if a geek stumbles out from the woods."

Daryl nodded and started following the trail at a faster pace. Rosie skipped to keep up with him a bit but barely broke a sweat doing it. She slowed when he slowed and twisted when he twisted, her attention completely on his body and the way it moved. Usually it unnerved him to be studied so closely, to have someone so close behind him and not underfoot; but Rosie was different. It was like her gaze was void of judgement or emotion, like she was following him because that was her task right then and nothing else. Daryl was so used to people looking down on him, or people getting in his face and forcing a challenge, that to have her wondering along silently behind him and not feel out of place, it was bizarre.

He slowed up and she pulled back as he did. He glanced behind him to catch her eye and nodded forward. The tracks were getting fresher and if they didn't slow up they'd be the ones spooking the deer or alerting the geek.

"You ready to go back to our best impression of civilisation?" Daryl murmured with a snort.

"Yeah, can't wait," Rosie scoffed.

"I'll bring ya back out soon," he said. "Promise."

"If you want me to stay sane, I'm gonna have to hold you that," Rosie answered with a chuckle.

"Ain't no skin off my bones if ya crazy or not," he said with a shrug and a grin.

Rosie snickered, creeping along after him. "I'm already crazy, but I'm still sane," she whispered.

"That don't make no sense," Daryl whispered back.

"Does if you've lived my life," Rosie muttered, more to herself than Daryl but he heard it anyway.

They carried on, tracking the deer and the dead man, not a word uttered from either of their lips. Rosie kept close but not too close and Daryl focused on the path ahead and the evidence in front of him.

  
Twenty minutes later and the two emerged from the forest to see Shane pointing a gun at them, a decapitated dead man and a half-eaten deer at his feet.

"Son-of-a-bitch!" Daryl snapped. "That's my deer! Look at it. All knawed on by this...filthy, disease-ridden, motherless poxy bastard!" He kicked the corpse a few times in frustration.

Rosie stood back and watched, folding her arms and groaning. "What a waste of time..."

"A waste? What d'ya call this?!" Daryl barked, lifting the twelve or so dead squirrels from his belt and shaking it at her.

"Not a fucking deer, is what I call that," Rosie barked back. "You caught all of them yesterday, we've been tracking that damn thing for what feels like forever!"

"Fuck you! Waste of time my ass! Ya didn't even wanna come back so I don't know why ya so upset!" Daryl snapped, kicking the corpse again.

"Calm down son. That's not helping," Dale said, looking in anguish at the man.

"What d'you know about it old man? Why don't ya take that stupid hat and go back to 'on golden pond'?" Daryl bit back.

"Daryl, shut up," Rosie huffed, glaring at him.

"We been tracking this deer for miles," he explained to the small group of people still stood around. "Was gonna drag it back to camp, cook us up some venison. What d'ya think?" He bent down to get a closer look at it. "D'you think we can cut around this chewed up part right here?"

"I would not risk that," Shane said, looking in disbelief at the man.

Daryl looked up at Rosie who merely raised her eyebrows at his ridiculous notion.

He sighed. "That's a damn shame. I s'pose the waste of time squirrel'll have to do..." His fierce gaze fixed itself on Rosie.

Rosie rolled her eyes at his pointed dig and shook her head. It had become common knowledge among the campers that there was some kind of unspoken, unofficial bond between Rosie and the Dixon brothers. No one understood why or how, but it was times like these when she cussed back at them or rolled her eyes at their outbursts that made it all the more apparent how comfortable she was around them. She never flinched, she never backed down and she always gave as good as she got.

The head of the dead man started moving again, knawing it's teeth and knashing it's jaws.

"Oh God!" Amy cried, grimacing at it as Andrea put her arm around her shoulders and led her away.

"Come on people! What the hell?!" Daryl raised the crossbow and shot a bolt straight through it. "It's gotta be the brain. Don't y'all know nothin'?" he grouched, pulling the bolt back out and stomping back through to the rest of the camp.

  
"Merle! Merle! Get yer ugly ass out here! I got us some squirrel. Let's stew 'em up!" Daryl called out.

"Daryl, just slow up a bit. I need to talk to you," Shane said, trying to keep up with him.

"About what?" Daryl grumbled, still walking.

Shane shot Rosie a look and she knew it wasn't going to be good. She groaned internally, imagining the many scenarios that were likely to play out should the words _Merle's dead_ escape Shane's mouth. Daryl was a hot head, everyone knew that. He threw stuff around, kicked out and cussed off at everyone, but Rosie was almost certain that none of them had actually seen Daryl Dixon truly lose his temper.

"It's about Merle," Shane said, watching Daryl slow up a fraction. "There was a...there was a problem in Atlanta."

"He dead?" Darly asked, the tension in his shoulders obvious to none but Rosie. They all knew it was coming, but they had no idea it was so close.

"We're not sure," Shane said.

"He either is or he ain't!" Daryl growled.

A man Rosie had never seen before stepped forward. "No easy way to say this, so I'll just say it..."

"Who're you?" Daryl glared at him.

"Rick Grimes," he said, looking unperturbed by the angry looks Daryl gave him.

"Rick Grimes, you got something you wanna tell me?" Daryl hissed.

Grimes...Rosie suddenly realised that the stranger was Lori's husband. That was all she needed, considering Lori and Shane had been shacking up in the woods for the past two weeks. Apparently he'd found his sweet release in the arms of his thought-dead best friend's wife and Rosie couldn't argue that the man had been in a much better mood since. Lori must not have hated the idea of seeing stars as much as Rosie did, either that or Shane had learnt his lesson and upped his game.

"Your brother was a danger to us all, so I handcuffed him to a roof, hooked him to a piece of metal," Rick explained.

Everything went still and quiet for a nanosecond. Other than Rosie and Daryl, the rest of the camp already knew, so they were waiting with baited breath for Daryl's reaction. Rosie on the other hand, she was more concerned about Merle. Sure, the guy was the world's biggest asshole who'd rob you blind the second you turned your back on him but...leaving him chained to a roof in the middle of the city...that was just callous. She wouldn't wish that sort of fate on anyone, well, almost anyone. Crossing her arms she watched the scene unfold further.

"Hold on. Let me process this..." Daryl spoke, rage coating every word he spoke. "You're saying you handcuffed my brother to a roof and you left him there?!"

"Yeah."

Daryl flung the dead squirrels at Rick and launched himself at the man, finally snapping. Rick shoved him back again.  
"Hey! Watch the knife!" T-dog cried as Daryl pulled it out of his pocket.

Shane's arms snaked around Daryl's neck, locking him in a chokehold as Rick pried the knife out of his hand. Daryl scrabbled around, clawing at Shane in an attempt to get him off.

"Okay. Okay," Shane said, in a weak attempt to calm the situation. Rosie wanted to laugh.

"You'd best let me go!" Daryl snarled.

"Nah, I think it's better if I don't," Shane said, still choking him.

"Chokehold's illegal," Daryl croaked.

"You can file a complaint," Shane drawled. "Come on, man. We'll keep this up all day."

Rick bent down to look Daryl in the eyes. "I'd like to have a calm discussion on this topic. D'you think we can manage that? Do you think we can manage that?" He raised his eyebrows, looking for an answer.

"Hmm?" Shane murmured in Daryl's ear.

Rosie shook her head and unfolded her arms. "Let him go," she said exasperatedly, stepping forward.

Shane let him go and Daryl lunged at Rick again, but this time Rosie stepped in front of him, throwing him off.

"Daryl, you need to stop and listen to the guy," she said. "You want to emulate Merle so damn much, fine. But you aren't gonna find Merle Merle's way. Just take a fucking breath and let him explain."

Daryl glared at her but backed off nonetheless. He grunted and nodded at Rick to get on with it as Rosie came to stand beside him.

"What I did was not on a whim. Your brother does not work or play well with others," Rick began.

Rosie snorted and Daryl glared at her. She shrugged her shoulders and he huffed.

"It's not Rick's fault. I had the key. I dropped it," T-dog confessed.

"You couldn't pick it up?" Rosie said before Daryl even had a chance to respond. Her brow was furrowed and her gaze intent. He was just as surprised as everyone else that Rosie was genuinely upset, especially since it was her that Merle gave the most grief to.

"Well, I dropped it in a drain," he said, looking guilty as hell. Rosie rolled her eyes and shook her head, her frown relaxing as she understood the dilema.

"If it's suppposed to make me feel better, it don't," Daryl muttered. His glare was still savage but Rosie could tell from his tone that he also understood. It wasn't fair and it wasn't right, but it was something.

"Well, maybe this will. Look, I chained the door to the roof...so the geeks couldn't get to him...with a padlock. It's gotta count for something." T-dog sighed, his eyes downcast but Rosie nodded at him.

It did count for something, even if it wasn't much to Daryl. To be fair to T-dog, it actually counted a lot considering what a racist asshole Merle Dixon was, and Rosie had spent every chance she got telling him what a backwards, redneck, trash-filled opinion it was to have. Hell, if it weren't for Daryl, she'd have broken his jaw just for breaking into her car. But Daryl was loyal to his asshole brother, and Rosie wasn't sure why but she didn't want to upset Daryl more than she wanted to hurt Merle. He was her kind and he was fairly quiet when he wasn't in a bad temper. Daryl left her be, he didn't ask her too many questions and he didn't try to engage her or involve her in anything. It wasn't the first time she'd been out hunting with him, but it was the first time they'd been gone longer than a day and she was sure it had something to do with telling him she'd been feeling incredibly claustrophobic.

Daryl growled again, shaking his head and glaring around the group. "Hell with all y'all. Just tell me where he is so I can go get him."

"He'll show you, isn't that right?" Lori piped up from behind.

"I'm going back," Rick said.

Lori turned and walked into Dale's RV without saying a word. Rosie refused to care what was going on between Rick and his wife, that was down to them, but she found her respect for Rick growing just knowing he wanted to go back for the man.

"Maybe next time Glenn says he wants to go alone, we let him go alone," Rosie said, watching as Glenn smirked and nodded.  
She liked Glenn, but Glenn liked people and Rosie didn't. If she wasn't hanging around the Dixons, she was usually hanging out with him. She watched the central performers of the group disperse and rather than follow Daryl she chose to follow Glenn this time instead.

  
"I'm surprised you're so pissed about Merle considering he's just as sexist as he is racist," Glenn murmured as they wondered away from the crowd a little bit.

Rosie shook her head again. "To be honest, I'm not exactly pissed. Well, at least not after hearing the full explanation..."

"Merle was dangerous," Glenn said. "Like, he lost it. Full on psycho lost it. Rick did the only thing he could and T-dog made a mistake-"

"I know. I know T-dog would never have left Merle up there like that on purpose. He doesn't have it in him. The guy's practically a saint," Rosie said, smiling at Glenn. "I guess it just took me a minute to process it and really understand what was going on."

Glenn nodded, glancing behind her as Shane approached. He looked irritated as hell and not in the best mood. Rosie wondered if it would be too obvious, ducking out of sight and avoiding him. She chose to stay where she was, not wanting to upset the man further.

"So...you didn't want to come back, huh?" Shane said, throwing the words at her like an accusation.

"What?" Rosie frowned, not sure what he was getting at.

"That's what Daryl said when you told him tracking that deer was a waste of time. He said you didn't want to come back," Shane huffed.

Rosie shrugged. "I'm not a people person."

"So what? You're just gonna up and leave, huh? Just like that?" he growled.

"I'm here, aren't I? I came back, I haven't left yet," Rosie said, her own irritability rearing it's ugly head.

"Doesn't mean you won't," Shane muttered savagely.

Rosie twisted round to face him properly. "You got a problem?" she hissed. "My brothers are out there-"

"Your brothers are dead Rosie, wake the fuck up!" Shane snapped.

"You mean like Rick was dead?" Rosie asked, watching Shane go from angry to livid in a second. "It's not my fault your best friend came back to life and you can't fuck his wife anymore. I'm not used to being around people for more than a few days...I don't cope well with it. Every friend I've ever had has died, and my family have faired just as well, so, you can take your judgy, pretentious crap and shove it where the sun don't shine. I'm doing my best and if that means disappearing for a few days with Daryl every now again, so be it. You question it again and I'll actually take off, 'cause I cope even less when someone presumes I have to answer to them."

Shane glared even more, his hands twisting into fists at his sides. He was beginning to lose it and if Rosie didn't know any better (which she clearly didn't) she'd say that Rick's resurrection was likely going to be his entire undoing.

"You didn't want to come back," Shane reiterated, spitting the words at her.

"I _never_ want to come back," Rosie answered. "Hell is always waiting on the otherside whenever I do."

"We're a team. A unit. We can't survive without each other," Shane said, taking a step back and shaking his head. It was like he was shaking the red fog from his eyes. "I need you Rosie..."

"Why d'you think I haven't left yet, dipshit," Rosie muttered, huffing at him. "I hate being your second in command, but it doesn't change the fact that I am. I hate it when people look at me and expect me to have all the fucking answers, but they still do and it doesn't stop them. I hate being part of a team and a unit, but it doesn't mean I haven't accepted that I play a crucial role just like everybody else...you assume I'm going to leave because I don't want to come back but you forget to ask why I stay..." Rosie shook her head. "I don't answer to you Shane. I don't answer to anyone. If I want to leave I will but right now, here's as good a place as any. Here's where I belong."

"Good," Shane said, a relieved sigh escaping his lips.

"I'm going to go look for Merle with Daryl and Rick though," she said.

"What?" Shane growled, his anger instantly alive again.

"Yeah Rosie, what? Why the hell would you volunteer on a suicide mission for that bastard?" Glenn asked, his eyes wide with disbelief.

"Because...I need to get out of this camp. Even if it's to look for some redneck idiot with a loose tongue...I need to get out and see the what the world's become...I need to fight again, keep my skills up, feel like I'm me again for the first time since this whole thing began..." Rosie looked between Shane and Glenn, "...guys, I'm not going to be of any use if I get any crazier than I already am. And if I don't go and do this, I'm gonna get crazier..."

"Rosie, please..." Shane whispered, mad eyes shining with tears.

"Look, I can at least get Rick out of your hair long enough for you to talk to Lori and try to forgo any awkwardness, okay?" Rosie murmured. "You're right, we all need each other and we all play vital parts. If you two can't get over this thing, this whole group will fall apart."

"Shit! You weren't just messing with him?" Glenn said, his eyes wide.

"Thanks Rosie," Shane hissed furiously.

"I'm sorry, I figured everyone knew. Daryl figured it out and so did a couple other people," Rosie said with a shrug.

"Who?"

"Andrea, Jim, Dale, I think..." Rosie said.

"Well, you can tell them to mind their own business and keep their mouths shut too," Shane snarled. "And that goes for you as well."

"Fuck you Shane," Rosie snapped. "Don't take your anger and frustration out on me. You're a good man, you're better than that."

Shane simply glared at her and stalked off.

"Jesus, that dude's wound pretty tight," Glenn muttered.

"Yeah, well you probably would be if you'd been screwing your best friend's wife," Rosie said, a small smirk on her lips but a heavy weight settling in her stomach. If Shane couldn't blow of steam with hard fucking anymore, things were going to get real messy real fast.

Glenn nodded and sniggered.

"He'll be okay, or he won't be, either way it's no one's problem but his," Rosie said.

After a short pause, Glenn cleared his throat and spoke again. "Are you seriously going to go after Merle?" he asked softly.

"Yeah, I seriously am. And I don't expect anyone to get why...I just...I need to get out of here for a few days. I need to get out from under everyone, and I think they have a better chance of finding him if I go with them," Rosie sighed and shook her head, biting her lip as she looked up to the sky, tears stinging her eyes. "I haven't heard anything from my brothers in over two weeks. I wanna see the state of the world. I wanna know what I'm dealing with. I wanna figure out how likely it is that I'll ever see them again..."

Glenn nodded. "Fair enough," he said. "I think I get that."

"I'll be back though," Rosie said. "Don't you worry about me."

"I always worry about you," Glenn said, throwing an arm around her and pulling her in for a hug. "Besides, you should be more worried about leaving Shane behind..." Glenn let her go and nodded his head in the direction of the cop and his former best friend. "Dude looks jacked..."

"Come on, lets go find out what's going on," she mumbled, dragging Glenn along behind her.

  
"Could you throw me a bone here, man? Could you just tell me why? Why would you risk your life for a douchebag like Merle Dixon?" Shane asked, clearly upset with the sheriff.

"Hey, choose your words more carefully," Daryl growled.

"No, I did. Douchebag's what I meant," Shane said with a nod. "Merle Dixon, the guy wouldn't give you a glass of water if you were dying of thirst."

Rosie and Glenn were pretty close now, stepping into the small circle that had formed as the two friends bickered.

"What he would or wouldn't do doesn't interest me. I can't let a man die of thirst...me. Thirst and exposure. We left him like an animal caught in a trap. That's no way for anything to die, let alone a human being," Rick said, trying desperately to reason with them all.

"So you and Daryl? That's your big plan?" Lori huffed, folding her arms and glaring at her husband. Rosie got the impression that their golden marriage wasn't exactly golden before, either.

Rick shot Glenn a sideways look.

"Oh come on!" Glenn cried, looking folornly at Rick as he turned to him. He flicked his eyes towards Rosie too.

"You know the way," Rick said. "You've been there before...in and out, no problem. You said so yourself. It's not fair of me to ask-"

"You're damn right it's not," Rosie muttered, shaking her head.

"Are you still going?" Glenn asked, looking at her.

"What?" Daryl, Rick, Lori and a few other people all looked at Rosie too.

"Yeah, I'm still going." Rosie folded her arms and refused to meet anyone else's eye.

"Then I'm in," Glenn sighed.

Rosie gave him a pained look. "Glenn-"

"I said I'm in," he cut her off. "I can't let you go off and have all the fun."

Rosie smirked and nodded, bumping her fist against his.

"That's just great. We're risking four lives now..." Shane huffed, starting to swing his arms around in frustration.

"Five," T-dog said, looking at them all.

Daryl huffed. "My day just gets better and better, don't it?"

Rosie threw him a disgusted and pointed look. "You see anybody else here stepping up to save his ass?"

"Why you?" Daryl frowned, looking at T-dog, refusing to even acknowledge Rosie's comment.

"You wouldn't even begin to understand. You don't speak my language," T-dog said.

Rosie was the only one who could see that Daryl had flinched. Merle didn't speak T-dog's language, that was for sure, but so many people assumed that Daryl was just like Merle. Rosie knew better. She could read it in his silences, in the comments he didn't make and the accusations he didn't throw.

Daryl had been brought up surrounded by racist, sexist scumbags, but that didn't mean he was one. He just blended in nicely with the crowd because what else was he supposed to do? He should have grown out of it by now but...the best Daryl could do was keep to himself. He learnt a long time ago that you don't rock the boat if you can help it. So long as he stuck to himself, didn't hurt no one or cause any trouble, he could class that as a win. Wasn't always easy, on account of Merle and having the last name Dixon, but Daryl tried. He tried. And no one knew how hard it was to have a heart like his and be surrounded by a life that felt like it was designed to break it.

"That's five," Dale said, forcing Rosie's eyes away from Daryl and back to the rest of the group.

"It's not just five," Shane argued. "You're putting every single one of us at risk. Just know that, Rick." He glared at his old partner and looked around the campsite. "Come on, you saw that walker. It was here. It was in camp. They're moving out of the cities. They come back, we need every able body we got. We need 'em here. We need 'em to protect camp." He turned to Rosie. "You five leave and who is gonna take the walkers down? You're the most able five, not including me..."

Rick answered before Rosie had chance. "It seems to me that what you really need most here are more guns..."

"Right! The guns!" Glenn cried, suddenly realising what Rick was getting at.

"Wait, what guns?" Shane asked, frowning at them.

"Six shotguns, two high-powered rifles, over a dozen handguns. I cleaned out the cage back at the station before I left," Rick explained. "I dropped the bag in Atlanta when I got swarmed. It's just sitting there on the street, waiting to be picked up."

"Ammo?" Shane said.

"700 rounds, assorted."

Lori turned to Rick, seeing how Shane was coming around to the idea of him leaving, now he knew weapons were on the line. Rosie had a lot of weapons, but nothing near that type of firepower.

"You went through hell to find us. You just got here and now you're gonna turn around and leave?!" she pleaded.

"Dad, I don't want you to go," Carl spoke up from his spot beside his mother.

"To hell with the guns. Shane is right. Merle Dixon? He's not worth one of your lives, even with guns thrown in. Tell me. _Make_ me understand," she said, gazing imploringly at him.

Rick sighed. "I owe a debt to a man and his little boy. Lori, if they hadn't taken me in, I'd have died. It's because of them I made it back to you at all," he returned her gaze, looking deep into her eyes, "they said they'd follow me to Atlanta. They'll walk into the same trap I did if I don't warn them."

"What's stopping you?" she murmured through unshed tears.

"The walkie talkie, the one in the bag I dropped. He's got the other one. Our plan was to connect when he got closer," Rick said.

"These our walkie talkies?" Shane asked.

"Yeah." Rick nodded.

"So use the CB, what's wrong with that?" Andrea frowned.

"The CB's fine. It's the walkies that suck to crap," Shane sighed, shaking his head. "Date back to the 70s, don't match any other bandwidth. Not even the scanners in our cars."

Rick looked at Lori. "I need that bag, okay?"

"Okay," Lori said, nodding.

Rick turned to Carl. "Okay?"

Carl nodded.

The drive to Atlanta was pretty quiet. No one said a word. Glenn drove the truck, with Rick and T-dog up front while Rosie shared the small back seat with Daryl. No one really wanted to be that close to the jittery hunter. He kept jiggling his knee and huffing loudly as they drove down the highway. It didn't take them long to reach the outskirts of the city limits.

"He better be okay," Daryl muttered.

"It's my only word on the matter," T-dog said.

"I told you the geeks can't get at him. The only thing that's gonna get through that door is us."

Glenn pulled the truck over and turned the engine off. "We walk from here."

The five of them clambered out of the vehicle and started walking along the railroad tracks towards the dead city. They moved slowly and quietly, watching out for walkers and letting the eery silence fill their ears. They came to a fence and Rosie stood back as she watched Rick cut through it with a pair of bolt cutters he'd borrowed off Dale. They all clambered through the hole and turned to face each other.

"Merle first or guns?" Rick asked, looking at Glenn.

"Merle! We ain't even havin' this conversation!" Daryl snapped.

"We are," Rick said, looking back at Glenn. "You know the geography, it's your call."

Rosie watched as Daryl stalked around like a caged animal, waiting for Glenn's reply. She wanted to reach out and calm him, but like most animals she knew he'd most likely bite her than accept her comfort. They might have some sort of connection but they hadn't built up nearly enough level of trust for her to try and attempt that, let alone get away with it if she did.

"Merle's closest. The guns would mean doubling back. Merle first," Glenn said.

Daryl breathed a sigh of relief and looked gratefully at Glenn, not that anyone realised it was a grateful look, more a look filled with a lot less animosity than usual.

The group made their way as quietly and quickly as they could towards the department store. Daryl took out one lone walker in the building and before they knew it, they were cutting the padlock around the chain on the door to the roof.

"Merle! Merle!" Daryl hollered as he shoved himself through the door.

Rosie was close behind, followed by Rick, Glenn and T-dog. She watched on as Daryl spotted a severed hand on the ground. He let out an anguished sob and began pacing the rooftop.

"No! No!" Daryl cried, shaking his head and unable to take his eyes off Merle's hand. "No! No! No!"

Rosie was the first to blink, taking in her surroundings. Daryl would have seen it too if he wasn't so emotionally compromised. Before she could say anything, Daryl chose how to react. He swung around, aiming his crossbow right at T-dog. Rick pulled his gun from his hip and pointed it straight at Daryl.

"I won't hesitate," Rick said, his eyes firm. "I don't care if every walker in the city hears it."

Rosie watched quietly from the side. She knew Daryl wasn't going to kill T-dog, even in a fit of rage he wouldn't have pulled the trigger. He might have beat on him a bit, but kill him? If he wanted to kill T-dog, he'd have pulled the trigger long before Rick stuck a gun to his head. He lowered the crossbow and squinted at Rick, choosing to say nothing.

"You got a do-rag or somethin'?" he mumbled, his eyes looking up at T-dog. The man pulled a rag out of his pocket, handing it to Daryl.

Daryl took it and placed it on the ground next to Merle's decaying hand. His eyes started taking in the scene, seeing all the things a hunter would have seen, and all the things a brother missed.

"I guess the sawblade was too dull for the handcuffs." He picked the hand up and squinted at it, turning it in his fingers a little bit. "Ain't that a bitch," he said. He gestured to Glenn and made him turn around while he tucked the hand safely into his backpack, much to Glenn's disgust. "He must have used a tornique," he continued, "maybe his belt. Be much more blood if he didn't."

Rosie watched as Daryl picked up the blood trail and began to follow it. T-dog grabbed the tools and Rosie brought up the rear as they all moved with Daryl.

"Merle?" Daryl called. "You here?" They started down the stairs, Daryl's eyes peeled as he followed the trail Merle had left.

The trail led them through an office, Daryl shooting a stray walker as the rest of the group filed in. There were two other downed dead men, and Rosie couldn't help but feel a surge of respect for Merle at having killed them while so incapacitated. The asshole was definitely a stubborn one.

"Had enough in him to take out these two sumbitches. One handed," Daryl muttered. "Toughest asshole I ever met, my brother. Feed him a hammer, he'd crap out nails."

Rick looked at Rosie and back at Daryl. "Any man can pass out from blood loss, no matter how tough he is."

Daryl grumbled and carried on looking. Rosie gave Rick a small nod and watched the hunter as he continued on. The four behind him moved quietly, trying not to shake his concentration.

"Merle!" Daryl shouted, moving along the corridor.

"We're not alone in here, remember?" Rick hissed, giving him a pointed look.

"Screw that," Daryl snapped quietly. "He could be bleeding out. You said so yourself."

They stepped quietly into the kitchen. Merle's belt was discarded on the cooker, blood everywhere. Four gas burners were lit, an iron steak weight sat beside is with a couple pots and pans.

"What's that burned stuff?" Glenn frowned, peering at the weight as Rick picked it up.

"Skin," Rick said with a grimace. "He cauterized the stump."

Rosie looked around, trying to work out what had happened since Merle patched himself up. He'd only been out here a single night, meaning he couldn't have got that far. Hell, it was unlikely he managed to cut his hand off in one go, he must have passed out from the pain more than once.

"Told you he was tough," Daryl said. "Nobody can kill Merle but Merle."

"Don't take that on faith. He's lost a lot of blood," Rick said, trying to reason with the man.

Daryl snorted, pointing at a broken window. "Yeah? Didn't stop him from bustin' outta this death trap."

Glenn frowned. "He left the building? Why the hell would he do that?!"

Rosie shrugged. "Why wouldn't he? As far as he knows, he's alone. We coulda told Daryl he died. He's doing what he's got to do...surviving."

"You call that surviving?" T-dog scoffed. "Just wondering out in the streets, maybe passing out? What're his odds out there?"

"No worse than bein' handcuffed and left to rot by you sorry pricks," Daryl huffed. "You couldn't kill 'im. Ain't so worried about some dumb dead bastard."

"What about a thousand dumb dead bastards?" Rick asked. "Different story?"

"Why don't you take a tally? Do what you want. I'm gonna go get 'im," Daryl growled, moving towards the door.

Rick stepped in front of him. "Daryl, wait." He grabbed hold of the man, trying to slow him down but only serving to anger him more.

"Get your hands off me!" Daryl barked. "You can't stop me!"

Rosie shook her head. "No one's trying to," she muttered.

"I don't blame you. He's family, I get that. I went through hell to find mine. I know exactly how you feel," Rick said, his arms outstretched but his hands off Daryl. "He can't get that far with that injury. We could help you check a few blocks around..." Rick looked at Rosie.

"Only if we keep a level head," she said.

Daryl's eyes met hers and his gaze seemed to pierce her soul. She didn't think she'd ever get used to the way this man could speak with a look.

"I could do that," he murmured.

T-dog shook his head. "Only if we get those guns first. I'm not strolling the streets of Atlanta with just my good intentions, okay?"


	6. Chapter 6

"You're not doing this alone," Rick said, looking at Glenn with a frown.  
  
The man had just briefly explained how he was going to run across the street all by himself and snag the bag of guns.  
  
"Even I think it's a bad idea and I don't even like you much," Daryl grumbled.  
  
Glenn huffed. "It's a good idea, okay? If you just hear me out."  
  
Rick took a step forwards and crouched down. They were currently holed up in an office a few blocks from the tank and the guns. Glenn had found a board marker and had drawn a simple map of the streets on the floor.  
  
"If we go out there in a group, we're slow, drawing attention," he explained, his eyes darting between Daryl and Rick. "If I'm alone, I can move fast." He picked up a bullclip and looked back at the two men. "Look. This is the tank, five blocks from where we are now." He placed the clip on the crudely drawn map. "That's the bag of guns," he said, putting a scrunched up bit of paper in front of it. "Here's the alley I dragged you into when we first met," he pointed to the street, "that's where Daryl, Rosie and I will go."  
  
"Why us?" Daryl asked, a small frown on his face.  
  
"Your crossbow is quieter than his gun," Glenn answered.  
  
"Okay, but why her?" Daryl nodded at Rosie. Glenn looked mildly uncomfortable.  
  
Rosie sniggered. "I don't take any of your shit, Dixon. That's why me."  
  
Daryl rolled his eyes and shook his head. "Only shit I give you is shit you deserve, Annie," he grumbled.  
  
"Anyway, while Daryl and Rosie wait here in the alley, I run up and grab the bag," Glenn said, putting a different kind of clip on the ground indicating Daryl and Rosie.  
  
"But you got us elsewhere?" Rick said, the frown still on his face.  
  
"You and T-dog, right!" Glenn murmured, picking up a rubber and placing it on the map further down the street from tank. "You'll be in this alley here."  
  
"Two blocks away? Why?" Rick asked.  
  
"I may not be able to come back the same way. Walkers might cut me off," he explained. "If that happens, I won't go back to Daryl. I'll go forward instead, all the way round to that alley where you guys are." He moved his hands to illustrate the routes he was seeing in his head. "Whichever direction I go, I got you in both places to cover me. Afterwards, we all meet back here."  
  
"Hey kid," Daryl said, a curious look in his eye. "What'd you do before all this?"  
  
"Delievered pizzas, why?" Glenn frowned.  
  
Rick looked back at Daryl, both of them obviously thinking that with Glenn's strategical mind, it was probably a waste. Rosie couldn't help the small smile that appeared on her lips. The world was full of so much untapped potential and incredible talent, people often forgot that unless you had the connections or the money, it wasn't ever likely to be found. Being a nobody and being discovered was about as probable as winning the lottery.  
  
The group left the office, using the rooftops to get around without getting swarmed. They split up, heading to their different alleyways. Rosie climbed down the ladder first, followed by Glenn and then Daryl. They ran along the narrow road, stopping briefly at a chainlink fence.  
  
"You got some balls for a chinaman," Daryl said, loading the crossbow.  
  
"I'm Korean," Glenn huffed.  
  
"Whatever," Daryl muttered.  
  
He and Rosie ducked down behind a trashcan as Glenn ran for the street and the bag. The two remained side by side, Rosie up against the wall, watching and waiting. Their chests rose and fell with heavy breaths, the air so tense you could cut it with a knife. Suddenly, Daryl was on his feet, pointing his weapon in the opposite direction that Glenn had run.  
  
"Woah! Don't shoot me! What do you want?" A young guy was stood with his hands raised as Rosie came up to see what had got Daryl wound so tight.  
  
"I'm looking for my brother," Daryl said. "He's hurt real bad. You seen him?"  
  
"Ayudame!" the guy cried.  
  
"Shut up!" Rosie hissed.  
  
"You're gonna bring the geeks down on us!" Daryl said. "Answer me!"  
  
Rosie put a hand on his shoulder. "Daryl, I don't think now is the-"  
  
"Answer me!" Daryl snapped again, shrugging her off.  
  
"Ayudame! Ayudame! Ayudame!" he cried. "Help me! Help me!"  
  
"Shut up!" Daryl barked, launching himself at the man, trying to cover his mouth with his hand in an attempt to quiet him. "Shut up. Shut up. Shut up."  
  
"Daryl!" Rosie hissed, moving forwards to stop him. Before she could intervene, two other guys ran down the alley, one of them pushing Daryl to the ground and the other jumping her.  
  
"Get off me!" Rosie yelled, not caring how much noise they were making now.  
  
Glenn rounded the corner to see both Rosie and Daryl struggling against the two men, the youngest one not even up off the floor yet.  
  
"That's it. That's the bag, Vato! Take it! Take it!" The guy kicking Daryl pointed at Glenn, his eyes wide as he spotted the duffel in his hand.  
  
Both guys ran towards Glenn, leaving Daryl and Rosie. Glenn dropped the bag as they shoved him to the floor. They kicked and they hit, one of them swinging a metal baseball bat for good measure.  
  
Rosie ran at them, in a much better state that Daryl after being accosted by them.  
She jumped one and he cried out, swinging her around and pinning her to him with the bat. The other one bent down to pick the bag up but started howling in pain. Rosie laughed, despite the terrible situation she found herself in, when she saw he'd been shot in the ass by one of Daryl's bolts.  
  
A car pulled up at the entrance to the alley and the man holding Rosie dragged her to it, shoving her in the car.  
  
"Get off me! Get off!" she growled, kicking and struggling as they forced her into the backseat. She didn't bother crying out for either of her commrades, knowing it wouldn't serve any purpose. She'd been in shit deeper than this before and while she might have been on an adrenaline high she had already noticed that they'd left one of their own behind, so it wasn't as though the fat lady was singing quite yet.

  
Rosie huffed and righted herself in the backseat, shaking off the hands of the two guys who'd taken her.  
  
"So," she sighed, "do I get names?"  
  
"'Scuse me?" The guy with a baseball bat glared at her.  
  
"I'm Rosie," she offered. "What're your names? Or do you want me to call you Asshole 1 and Asshole 2?"  
  
"We ain't the assholes, bitch," the same guy muttered.  
  
"Sure you are," she snapped. "You jumped my friends and just started beating on them, no warning given."  
  
"Hey! It was your friend who started beating on our guy first!" he cried.  
  
"Yeah, because your guy was screaming his head off and drawing in all the geeks!" Rosie argued. "Come on dude! What would you have done?!"  
  
The guy grumbled, shuffling in his seat.  
"I'm Felipe," the guy that had taken the arrow to his ass spoke up. "He's Jorge."  
  
Rosie nodded, folding her arms and staring out the window. "Do I get to know where we're going?"  
  
"No," Felipe grunted, clearly in pain.  
  
"D'you want some help with that?" Rosie asked, smirking.  
  
"Fuck you, bitch," Jorge growled.  
  
Rosie held her hands up, still smirking. "You shouldn't have pulled it out," she said. "You need to put pressure on it. I can sew it up for you when we get to wherever it is we're going, if you want?"  
  
"How'd you know what to do?" Felipe huffed.  
  
"I have a lot of experience with wounds," she said, the smirk sliding off her face. "Specifically the kind you can't go to hospital with..."  
  
Felipe narrowed his eyes at her. "You a criminal?"  
  
"In some circles," Rosie said, giving them a cryptic shrug.  
  
"And in others?" he asked.  
  
"In others I'm fucking crazy," Rosie mumbled. "Until I'm not."  
  
Jorge frowned at her, shaking his head. Her words obviously made no sense to him and Rosie didn't much care. She shifted in her seat, slouching a little and turning to stare out the window.  
  
It was a short drive to their destination. The car paused in front of what looked to be an old abandoned factory, the doors opening for them to drive through and park. It took a minute for Rosie's eyes to adjust and then she was being yanked from the backseat by force.  
  
"Hey! Get your hands off me!" she snapped. "You want me to walk, fine. Just point me in the right direction. But you touch me again and I'll drop your ass."  
  
A voice chuckled from behind her and she swung around, looking at what appeared to be the leader of the group.  
  
"Feisty one," he said with a grin. "It's been a long time since-"  
  
"Don't bother asshat," Rosie grumbled. "You think threatening to rape me is gonna get you anywhere, think again."  
  
The man blinked, his unsuredness evident in his eyes if only for a few seconds.  
"Where are my guns?" he asked instead.  
  
"G, we were jumped by her friends," Jorge explained. "We lost Miguel..."  
  
"Your friends gonna hurt him?" Guillermo asked.  
  
"No more than you'd have hurt me if I wasn't being compliant," Rosie said with a shrug. "They'll probably scare him shitless but they won't actually do much."  
  
"What is much?" Felipe growled.  
  
"They'll slap him around a bit, try to get some answers. I'm assuming your boy isn't likely to give up without at least some persuasion?" Rosie huffed.  
  
"That's true." Felipe nodded. "He's a lot more loyal than you're coming off right now."  
  
"Oh fuck you!" Rosie snapped. "I'm not stupid enough to think flopping my dick on a table is gonna help. You're all morons, my side included."  
  
Guillermo studied the woman for a moment and then jerked his head up slightly. "What would you do?"  
  
"Talk," she said. "Have a fucking conversation. One that centres around honesty instead of fucking bravado!"  
  
"What makes you think they'd talk? What makes you think we would?" Jorge scoffed.  
  
Rosie stared straight at him, her tone flat. "Because none of us are fucking dead yet."  
  
The gang that now surrounded her were all looking at each other and frowning.  
  
"What's that got to do with anything?" Felipe asked.  
  
"If all you cared about was those sodding guns you'd have shot us all in the street, no questions asked. You're not killers," Rosie said. "And neither are my guys."  
  
"One of your guys shot me in the ass!" Felipe snapped.  
  
"Yeah, and you should count yourself lucky because he's a perfect fucking shot and if he'd aimed at your head you'd be fucking dead!" Rosie said, getting more and more agitated with their inability to listen. She left out the part where Daryl probably would have aimed at his head if he'd been in any real condition to. "They're good people and if you're good people, which I think you might be, there's nothing stopping you from just fucking talking! No one has to die, but you carry on like this and someone is going to!"  
  
"We won't shoot first," Guillermo said, "so whatever blood is shed is on their hands."  
  
"Well neither will they, so it looks like you're all gonna be standing around with your junk out indefinitely then, doesn't it?" Rosie said, all out if patience.  
  
"I'm not negotiating with the guy that shot me," Felipe said, shaking his head.  
  
"Oh screw you! You're not the only one who's pissed. You fucking kidnapped me and I'm not complaining!" Rosie barked.  
  
"They kidnapped Miguel," Felipe argued back.  
  
"The fuck did they! You assholes left him there because you were out of fucking time! You'd all caused enough commotion that we were about to get swarmed!" Rosie roared. "You're fucking lucky they won't have just left him on the goddamn street!"  
  
"Enough!" Guillermo bellowed. "Enough arguing." He turned to Rosie and sighed. "I will take what you've said under advisement. We'll see what happens when your friends come to find us. Till then, Jorge is going to tie you up and keep an eye on you. Okay?"  
  
Rosie folded her arms and huffed. "Fine. Whatever."  
  
Jorge went to grab her and she twisted out from his reach, tripping him up.  
  
"Bitch! What was that for?!" Jorge growled.  
  
"I told you not to touch me," she said. "Tell me where to go and I'll go."  
  
"How am I supposed to trust that?" He glared at her.  
  
"You can't, but it's either that or we have a rather aggressive punch up," Rosie offered.  
  
"There's too many of us here for you to beat," Jorge scoffed.  
  
"Women are made of pain, and I can assure you that I've suffered enough to inflict it tenfold," Rosie said, her tone dark and deep.  
  
Guillermo stepped up and drew her attention away from Jorge. "Have you ever made a promise you didn't keep?"  
  
"Didn't or couldn't?" Rosie asked.  
  
"What's the difference?"  
  
"I promised my brothers' that I'd move on after they died, but I couldn't," Rosie said. "I promised them a lot of things I couldn't do in the end."  
  
Guillermo gave her a small smile. "I like you. You promise me you'll co-operate, that you'll do what we ask so long as it won't bring bodily harm to you or your friends, and I will comply with your demands as best I can. I will trust you," he said.  
  
Rosie contemplated his offer for a short minute. Realising it was the best deal she was going to get, she nodded and stuck out her hand, shaking his in agreement.  
  
"Jorge, take her to one of the offices above the workshop. Don't tie her up until I tell you," Guillermo said.  
  
"But-"  
  
"Just do it," Guillermo said, shaking his head and walking away.

  
Jorge groaned and looked at a smirking Rosie. He pointed to a set of stairs in the corner of the room and gestured for her to start walking. Rosie nodded and started forwards, not at all put out when Jorge fell into step behind her. She climbed the stairs and took his directions willingly, leading her all the way into a small office.  
  
"Sit," Jorge said.  
  
"You know, manners go a long way," Rosie muttered, sitting in the chair all the same.  
  
"Shut up," Jorge growled, dropping into a seat he'd dragged to the door.  
  
Rosie twiddled her thumbs, literally. She looked around the room but there was nothing interesting or invoking around. There was another chair situated at the same desk, so she pulled it around and stuck her feet up on it, leaning back and closing her eyes, hands clasped together gently on her stomach.  
  
"What're you doing?" Jorge asked with a frown.  
  
"Sleeping," Rosie mumbled.  
  
"You can sleep at a time like this?"  
  
She scoffed but her eyes remained closed. "I've slept through worse. Besides, you're providing a free lookout and I'm in need of some shut-eye. There's nothing else to do so I figure it'd be stupid not to take the opportunity while I've got it."  
  
Jorge hummed his agreement, watching the woman with curiousity. She seemed so at ease despite being in imminent danger (as far as she knew). They didn't even know whether her friends would come for her or whether they'd just high-tail it out of the city and leave her for dust.  
  
He had a feeling they'd come back, just like she did, and it proved one thing; she was more important to them than the guns. It meant there was room for demands to be made, that was for sure.  
  
Rosie hadn't been asleep long before the door opened and another guy walked in. He spoke something in Spanish, gesturing to a guy behind him and then Jorge was nodding.  
  
"I gotta go," Jorge said to Rosie. "Seems your friends came through. They're looking for you."  
  
"Idiots," Rosie sighed, shaking her head.  
  
"This is Javier and Emilio," he said, gesturing at the two guys. "They're going to take you to the roof and tie your hands up, okay? That's G's orders."  
  
Rosie sighed again and nodded. "Fine."  
  
"Up," Javier called, beckoning her with his fingers. "Let's go."  
  
"Coming," Rosie said, forcing a smile onto her face. She couldn't help but think how lucky they were that her brothers hadn't caught up to her yet. Dean wouldn't have even hesitated before he came in guns blazing.  
  
Rosie walked calmy through the corridors and up the steps to the roof. She turned around and let the two men bind her wrists. Emilio took a roll of tape from his pocket and tore a strip off it.  
  
"To stop you talking," he said, sticking it over her mouth as she glared at him.  
  
Then the world went dark as Javier put a pillow over her head. Great, she thought, just great. So it seemed Guillermo hadn't really taken her advice, which was bound to end badly. She heard voices below her but was too far away to make them out. Why did some men have to be so goddamn stubborn?  
  
All of a sudden she was shoved forward and the pillow was taken off her head. She squinted and looked down, seeing Rick, Glenn and Daryl all positioned behind the screaming kid from the alley.  
  
Daryl's eyes flicked up to hers and she knew in that moment that if she didn't send him some kind of message to let him know she was fine, all hell was going to break loose. He was barely holding on to his calm, so she sent the only message she could, she winked at him. She watched as his stance softened ever so slightly, something no one else seemed to notice despite being a lot closer to him.  
  
She felt her own shoulders drop in relief, knowing there was still a small chance this could all work itself out peacefully.  
A few seconds later and the three of them were dragging the kid back with them, Daryl looking up at her as she was pulled away from the edge of the roof. She gave him a brief nod before losing sight of him.  
  
Javier gripped her arm and tried to push her back towards the door. She spun around to face him, ripping the tape off her mouth and glaring at him.  
  
"Don't even fucking try it," she snarled, having effortlessly slipped out of the terrible knots he'd used to tie her up. She turned and stalked back to the door and down the steps, the other two running behind her.

  
"What happened?" she demanded, coming to stand directly in front of Guillermo and ignoring the half-dozen cocked guns pointed at her.  
  
"That redneck is a special kind of sick," Guillermo snapped, his face twisted in disgust. "He threatened to cut off Miguel's feet. Showed him the hand of a guy he'd already butchered! I thought you said they wouldn't hurt him!"  
  
Rosie snorted. "Daryl didn't cut some guy's hand off. That's his brother's hand. We found it when we came back to get him. He got himself into a spot of trouble and ended up chained to a metal pipe on a rooftop."  
  
"So he didn't cut it off someone?" Guillermo frowned.  
  
"No," Rosie laughed. "I told you they'd scare the kid shitless. I should have known Daryl would pull a move like that but I didn't even think..." She shook her head, still chuckling to herself. "Besides, you still left the kid with them...what does that say about you lot?"  
  
Guillermo seemed to have calmed down a bit. "Take her around back, to the home."  
  
Jorge went to argue. "G-"  
  
"Take her to the home," he snapped, pointing towards the back of the factory.  
  
"Fine," Jorge bit back. "Emilio, you come with me. You can keep an eye on her there."  
  
Emilio nodded and followed them as they walked. Rosie frowned as she went, rounding a corner to a little garden and then up a set of rusted steps. She finally came to the door and followed Jorge through it, trying to take in everything she was seeing.  
  
It was a nursing home. There were people everywhere, caring for the elderly residents, chatting to them, hanging out with them, milling around in a hundred different directions. Jorge led the way into the communal hall and Rosie gaped at the people scattered about.  
  
"I'm gonna leave you here with Emilio," Jorge said. " _Behave_..."  
  
"Pfft. Dude I didn't even listen to my daddy when he said that," she chuckled. She was pleasantly surprised to see the corner of his mouth twitch slightly; he was warming to her.  
  
"What happened?" Rosie asked again. "What happened with my friends?"  
  
"Nothing you need to worry yourself with," Jorge said. "I don't even know why someone like you is with them anyway."  
  
"They're good people," Rosie said sincerely.  
  
Jorge scoffed. "Everyone thinks they're good people."  
  
"Not everyone," Rosie said with a sad shake of her head. "The bad ones, they know it. They know it like it's seared into their bones. They know it and they love it."  
  
"And how are we supposed to trust that your guys are good people?" Jorge asked.  
  
"You just gotta look in their eyes," Rosie said. "Intent to kill is always right there. And it doesn't usually come with hesitation."  
  
Jorge left without answering. Emilio stared at her, contemplating her words. He wasn't so sure. He knew that given the right circumstances, he'd definitely kill. He already had.  
  
"I'm not saying that good people won't kill, I'm just saying they aren't as quick to pull the trigger," Rosie said, as if she'd read his mind. "And there's no thrill when they do."  
  
Emilio sighed and nodded, understanding what she was saying. "You are good people?"  
  
Rosie shook her head. "I wish." She let out a small, sardonic chuckle. "My life...the things I've seen...the things I've done, even before..." she shook her head again "...I'm not good. There's no way you come out of my life good."  
  
Emilio frowned. "You don't seem trigger happy, or like you've ever enjoyed the kill...?"  
  
"I'm a different type of monster," Rosie explained sadly. "I'm not the world-went-to-shit-and-now-I-don't-have-to-hide-the-evil kind of monster."  
  
"So what kind of monster are you?" Emilio asked.  
  
"The kind who was already used to a world like this before everyone else was," Rosie said with a shrug. "The kind that looks and sounds like good people, until its not."  
  
Emilio nodded again. He looked around at the people in the home, watching as they pottered about, naive to the world outside these walls. "The kind that's done terrible things so other people wouldn't have to? So other people wouldn't suffer?"  
  
"Something like that," she murmured.  
  
Emilio sighed. "G...he told your friends he wanted the guns. He told them to come back with them and then he'd make the trade, or to come back locked and loaded...see how far they got..."  
  
Rosie looked at him with wide eyes. "What?!"  
  
Emilio shrugged. Rosie took off, back towards the factory.  
  
"Wait! What are you doing?!" Emilio yelled, running after her.  
  
"Stopping them! They're gonna blow holes in each other!" Rosie yelled back.  
  
"G won't be the one to take the first shot!" Emilio huffed defensively.  
  
"Yeah? Neither will Rick. But it's a highly charged atmosphere, guns being pointed in everyone's faces...someone is gonna take that first shot and we have to stop it happening," Rosie said as Emilio caught up to her.  
  
"Why?"  
  
"What d'you mean _why_? Because we don't want anyone to die! And because if they start shooting, the dead are gonna hear and this whole place will be overrun in minutes," Rosie said.  
  
"I hadn't thought about it that way," he muttered, running beside her.  
  
"No shit sherlock! I don't think they have either," she snapped, running through the garden and around the corner.

 

Rosie got there just as everyone cocked their guns and started pointing them at each other.  
  
"Woah woah woah!" she cried, waving her hands in the air as she charged through them. "What the fuck is wrong with you all?!"  
  
"Rosie?" Rick frowned, his gun still aimed at Guillermo's head. "You're okay...?"  
  
"I'm fine!" she said, moving towards them.  
  
"Great," Daryl grunted, pulling her behind him as she got in arm's reach. "We'll be goin' then."  
  
"Get off me!" she huffed, slapping his hand away and moving back into the middle of the group. She turned to Guillermo. "What happened to talking?"  
  
"Didn't work out," he said, glaring at her.  
  
"Did you even try it?" She stuck her hands on her hips and took his silence to mean exactly what it did; he hadn't tried it. "So this was the big plan? The great idea? Shooting each other to shit on the outskirts of a city filled with thousands of the fucking dead?"  
  
The faces around her began to drop, realisation dawning on them that she was in fact right and that so much gunfire was sure to attract a hoard.  
  
"I thought I told you to watch her," Jorge grumbled at Emilio as he lowered his weapon slightly.  
  
"She's very persuasive," Emilio said, grimacing at his own admission.  
  
"Felipe!" An old voice called from the back of the room. "Felipe!" An elderly lady appeared, walking through the crowd as each gang member moved respectively out of her way.  
  
"Abuela, go back with the others...now," Felipe said, trying to get her to retreat.  
  
"Get that old lady out of the line of fire!" Daryl snapped.  
  
"Maybe if you put your weapon down, there'd be no line of fire," Rosie snarked.  
  
"Fuck you Annie," he grumbled. "I'll put mine away when they put theirs away."  
  
Rosie sniggered. "That's like a backwards way of saying I'll show you mine if you show me yours."  
  
Guillermo frowned at Rosie and Daryl's exchange, but tore his attention from the smirking brunette and the glaring redneck to address the old lady.  
  
"Abuela, listen to your mijo, okay?" he said. "This is no place for you right now."  
  
Abuela's eyes came to rest on Guillermo. "Mr Gilbert is having trouble breathing," she explained. "He needs his asthma stuff. Carlitos didn't find it. He needs his medicine."  
  
"Felipe, go take care of it, okay?" He looked up at the man. "And take your grandmother with you."  
  
Felipe nodded. "Abuela! Ven conmigo, por favor."  
  
"Who are these men?" Abuela asked, turning to Rick and the others.  
  
"Por favor, ven conmigo," Felipe said again, trying to get his grandmother to leave.  
  
Abuela's eyes widened as she took in Rick's uniform. "Don't you take him!"  
  
"Ma'am?" Rick frowned in confusion.  
  
"Felipe's a good boy. He has his trouble but he pulls himself together. We need him here," she said, glaring somewhat at Rick.  
  
"Ma'am, I'm not here to arrest your grandson," Rick said, lowering his gun slightly.  
  
"Then what d'you want him for?" she asked, now the confused one.  
  
"He...he was helping us find a missing person," Rick said. "Woman named Rosie, but she's here now, so we'll be on our way." He nodded at Rosie who folded her arms and glared at him.  
  
"Oh! I saw you in the hall," Abuela said, taking a step towards her. She rested a hand on Rosie's arm and looked up at her with kind eyes. "I was going to ask you if you'd like a cup of tea? You'll stay for a cup, won't you?"  
  
"I'd love to," Rosie smiled. "Can my friends stay too?"  
  
"Of course!" Abuela said, taking hold of one of Rosie's hands. "Come, come. This way."  
  
Rick groaned. "Rosie-"  
  
"Rick, you are gonna want to see this, trust me," Rosie said, following Abuela back to the nursing home.  
  
Reluctantly Rick followed, a grumbling Daryl and perplexed T-dog and Glenn ambling along behind.

  
They found Mr Gilbert in the throes of his asthma attack and watched while Felipe gave him his medicine and helped calm him.  
  
"What the hell is this?" Rick frowned.  
  
"An asthma attack, by the looks of it," Glenn said.  
  
T-dog turned to Rosie. "I thought you were being eaten by dogs, man."  
  
From the corner, three little chihuahuas started yapping and Rosie snorted.  
"I was terrified," she laughed.  
  
"Could I have a word with you?" Rick looked at Guillermo. Rosie heard him muttering to the man as he walked away. "You're the dumbest son of a bitch I ever met..."  
  
Rosie turned back to the small group, smiling at them. "I told you you'd want to see this."  
  
"I didn't wan' ta see nothin'," Daryl muttered. "I woulda been happy if you'd jus' turned up and come with us."  
  
"Well, it's a good job I don't live to keep you happy then, isn't it?" Rosie mumbled back. "I still cannot believe you all walked in ready to blow the place apart! I mean, seriously!"  
  
Emilio, Jorge, Felipe and Javier were now standing around with them, eyeing their interaction with curiosity.  
  
"What happened to your strategic way of thinking?" Rosie asked Glenn. "Your genius just fizzed out the minute I got taken?"  
  
"No, more like Daryl's level head," Glenn huffed, folding his arms as T-dog snickered.  
  
"Shut up," Daryl growled, glaring at the two.  
  
"Oh! She's your girl?" Jorge said, his eyes wide. "Shit man! I get it now-"  
  
"She ain't mine," Daryl practically snarled. "We ain't even friends."  
  
"No, you're somethin' else entirely," T-dog said, smirking at them.  
  
Rosie rolled her eyes and Daryl's hackles rose.  
  
"Unless you wan' me ta shoot you straight 'tween your eyes, I suggest you shut the hell up!" Daryl barked.  
  
"Daryl, calm down," Rosie sighed, shaking her head.  
  
Daryl grunted, his glare flicking around the small group, daring anyone else to say anything.  
  
"Nah, she ain't yours alright," Jorge snickered, obviously not getting the hint. "But you sure are hers, right?" He winked at Daryl and nearly got a broken nose.  
  
"Daryl!" Rosie cried, stepping between him and Jorge, glaring into his searing blue eyes as she wrapped her hand around his raised fist. "Fucking hell! Chill out!"  
  
Daryl hissed at her. "You better back off..."  
  
"Or what asshole?" Rosie said, standing her ground.  
  
"Or you ain't gonna like what comes next!" He shouted, getting right up in her face, his fist still in her hand.  
  
The vatos lot that surrounded them moved forward, T-dog and Glenn rolled their eyes and let them be. Before anyone could intervene, Rosie had already reacted.  
  
"Bull _shit_!" She stepped into him, forcing their bodies to line up against one another. "You know what's coming next as much as I do! You're just throwing words out and trying to scare me! When are you gonna learn Daryl Dixon, that _you don't scare me!_ "  
  
"I ain't tryin' scare you woman!" Daryl huffed, backing down and letting his fist fall. He didn't move his face away from hers though. "I'm tryin' to get you to piss off an' leave me alone!"  
  
"Yeah, by threatening elusively that _something_ is gonna happen to me and I won't like it," Rosie argued. "That's practically the definition of trying to scare me!"  
  
"I ain't like that-"  
  
"I know! For fuck's sake Daryl, out of everyone on this godforsaken planet, you're probably the one most in control of your goddamn temper! So stop trying to make out like you're gonna snap just to get your own way! Fucking hell!" Rosie let out a small cry of frustration. "You're driving me fucking nuts!" She fisted her hands in her hair and looked at him in annoyance.  
  
Daryl huffed, glaring at her before stalking off and muttering a half-hearted 'whatever.'  
  
Emilio looked at her with his eyebrow raised. "But you aren't together?"  
  
"Shut up," she huffed, stalking off too.  
  
He turned to the rest of the group and smirked. "Because I really felt like anyone else had talked to him like that and they'd have walked away with a broken jaw..."  
  
"Yeah, they would have done," Glenn grinned.  
  
"Told you," T-dog chuckled. "Something else entirely.  



	7. Chapter 7

It wasn't long before the five of them were making their way back. Rosie had given warm goodbyes to some of the old folk and a few of the vatos gang, despite Daryl's grumbling about how they'd kidnapped her and didn't deserve a thing. 

Glenn smirked at Rick, nodding at the sheriff's hat now back upon his head. "Admit it. You only came back to Atlanta for the hat."

Rick laughed. "Don't tell anybody."

"You've given away half our guns and ammo," Daryl grumbled.

"Not nearly half," Rick replied.

"For what?" Daryl frowned. "Bunch of old farts who're gonna die off momentarily anyhow? Seriously, how long you think they got?"

"How long do any of us?" Rick answered.

"This world is gonna claim all of us eventually," Rosie sighed. "Why shouldn't they be allowed to prolong the inevitable just as much as we are?"

Before anyone could respond to that, they all realised that the spot they were walking towards, the one they'd left the van in, was empty. 

"Oh my god," Glenn muttered. 

"Where the hell's our van?!" Daryl growled.

"We left it right here!" Glenn shook his head, his brow furrowed. "Who would take it?"

"Merle," Rick said immediately.

"He's gonna be takin' some vengence back to camp," Daryl said.

"Then we need to get moving," Rosie said, turning towards camp and starting back at a run. The four guys followed her, groaning and grumbling as they went. 

Not far from camp, as dusk started to fall, the sound of gunshots rang out across the quiet night.

Rick stalled, looking towards the sound, his eyes wide and fearful. "Oh my god!"

"Go! Go!" Glenn cried, urging them on and making them pick up the pace.

By the time they breeched the camp grounds, all hell had broken loose. There were walkers everywhere and so many screams. Rosie caught sight of Andrea hunched over Amy, blood pooling on the floor. She felt the familiar pang of loss for a second or two before it was gone. She'd kept her distance for a reason, and she felt validated in that reason now.

Rosie cocked the gun in her hand and took aim, shooting a walker straight between the eyes with almost perfect precision. Her heart turned cold and it was like work-mode had re-engaged. She shot another walker in the head and continued on, aiming and firing, until her gun was empty. She pulled another gun from where she'd holstered it, shooting the dead as though she were some kind of machine. It wasn't the first time she'd been in deep shit and she was sure it wasn't gonna be the last time.

As the dust settled, bile in her throat, she saw from the corner of her eye Rick running to Carl and Lori. Shane's eyes caught hers and she knew he was in trouble; she knew he was beginning to turn monster even if he didn't. She ignored Andrea sobbing over Amy and walked straight over to the campfire, still burning like chaos hadn't just made an appearance. She sat down and closed her eyes, her shoulders falling instead of tears. She felt like an idiot.

"You okay?" Daryl's gruff voice sounded from beside her. 

"Fine," she said, not looking up.

"I didn't know you were such a good shot," he said.

"One of the perks of being a hunter," she mumbled.

Daryl nodded. 

Rosie sat quietly for a few minutes, a small huff eminating from her lips as she focused on the dying embers of the fire. "Why do I feel so goddamn guilty?" she whispered.

Daryl shrugged. "'Cause you weren't here," he said.

"I should have been-"

"Nah..." He shook his head. "You shoulda been wherever you wan'ed ta be. You don't owe anyone nothing..."

Rosie sighed, her throat stinging and her eyes glistening with unshed tears. She knew she wasn't going to cry. She knew she wasn't all that devastated. She knew she was a monster and she was so tired of feeling that way, of being that way. When was she ever going to care again, really care, about someone that wasn't Sam or Dean. 

"I might not owe them anything but I shouldn't have strung them along and pretended I cared," Rosie mumbled, clearing her throat.

"Huh?" Daryl's eyes met hers. 

"I feel nothing," she murmured with a shrug. "I feel nothing, Daryl. No pain, no regret, no real compassion...just guilt. Because I couldn't save them."

Daryl held her gaze. "Ain't nothin' wrong with that."

"I've lived with these people for months," Rosie said, an earnest waver in her voice. "I've worked with them, laughed with them, ate with them...I should feel something..."

"Nah..." Daryl shook his head and dropped his gaze to the fire. "When you're used to relyin' on just you...when you're used to people not givin' a shit, well, you can't help but start not givin' a shit either. It's self preservation. It hurts less when people do the shitty things you always knew they would..."

Rosie nodded. She got the feeling that Daryl understood her on a level no one else ever really had or would. There was a connection there that she hadn't ever felt before, not like that. And she didn't really want to fight it either.

  
They sat side by side staring into the fire for a little while longer. Rosie knew there would be a ton of questions and strange looks; every single bullet she'd fired had hit it's target dead on. She knew her face had probably been a picture too, all cold and hard and unfeeling. She also knew that none of these people were used to dealing with dead bodies and the aftermath of a massacre, not that it was common for her but she'd been party to the clean up of the odd one or two over the years. She sighed and stood up, wishing she could get a few hours shut eye before hauling the many corpses all littered around the camp to their final resting place. Unfortunately for her the sun had already started to rise and she needed to make sure the dead weren't likely to stir.

"You gonna be alrigh'?" Daryl mumbled, his intense gaze resting on her again.

"Yeah," she said, nodding. "I'm just tired. I wanna get a head start on clearing up and making sure the dead aren't gonna wake up with the rest of us."

Daryl cleared his throat and tipped his head in the direction of Andrea, still curled around her lifeless sister. "You mean like that?" 

"Yeah..." Rosie sighed. She looked back at him and held his gaze. "I ever die or get bit like that, you stick a bolt straight between my eyes, no hesitation."

"Sure thing," Daryl said.

"And if you ever see my brothers you tell them I loved them and that I died good," she said. "I died still me."

Daryl nodded. He held his hand out. "You do the same for me?"

Rosie shook his hand. "No hesitation."

They stepped back from each other and surveyed the area, bodies strewn everywhere. Several survivers were staring warily in their direction and Rosie had a feeling she was the one now setting them on edge. 

"Don't pay 'em no mind," Daryl muttered, counting corpses. "They're too quick to forget they ain't been chomped on 'cause o' what you can do. They're too quick to forget they've still been eatin' meat 'cause 'o Merle an' me."

Rosie couldn't disagree with him.

"So, what's the plan?" Glenn stepped up beside her, T-dog close behind.

"We round the bodies up," Rosie said. "Get them out of camp. We can pile them up just past the RV. Make sure they're all neutralised. Someone needs to build a fire to dispose of them."

"I'll get on that," Daryl said, stepping away and calling to a couple guys who were milling around for help. 

"We can't burn all of them," Glenn said. "We bury our own and burn the rest."

"Fine, but I'm not doing the digging," Rosie said. 

"You'd be happy for us to throw you on a pile of geeks and watch you burn, should you die?" Glenn glared.

"Hell, so long as you salt me first, that's exactly what I'd want you to do," Rosie answered, leaving Glenn a little perplexed and flummoxed. She shrugged and walked off, starting to gather the bodies.

It didn't take long to get a good pile going, dragging the dead up to Daryl who was situated in the spot she'd pointed out, pick axe in hand as he swung it into their heads. Glenn and T-dog had taken over the fire and were throwing walkers into it, watching them burn.

Rosie watched as she dragged another body up to Daryl, giving him a nod as he walked over to help her. Lori had tried talking to Andrea, Rick had tried 'telling her how it was' and got a gun to the face. Amy was still lying on the ground, waiting to come back as something else. 

"Y'all can't be serious?" Daryl muttered at them. "Let that girl hamstring us? The dead girl's a time bomb."

"What do you suggest?" Rick said, giving him a tired but pointed look.

"Take the shot. Clean, in the brain from here," Daryl said. "Hell, I can hit a turkey 'tween the eyes from this distance."

"No," Lori hissed. "For God's sakes, let her be."

Rosie barely muffled the scoff that escaped her lips. 

"What?" Lori snapped. 

"We don't live in a world where we can let things be, not anymore," Rosie said.

"Yeah, well some of us aren't such a dab hand at slaughter," Lori spat as she stalked off. 

"Hey!" Daryl barked.

"Lori!" Rick called after her.

Rosie shook her head, her face hard and her heart cold. An array of expressions stared back at her, ranging from fear to awe to pity. Her eyes found Daryl's, whose were the only ones looking back at her without judgement or concern. 

"Rosie, I'm sorry," Rick murmured, apologising for his wife. "She's just upset."

"Yeah, it's fine. I'm also a dab hand at being the target everyone uses to take it out on," Rosie said, walking off towards Andrea. 

Rick shook his head and looked at Shane. "She's...unnerved the group," Rick said, watching the way people were looking at the girl.

"She damn near saved the group all on her own," Daryl bit back.

"I know but...the look on her face-"

"The look on her face don't mean shit," Daryl growled. "Just be grateful she's on our side."

  
Rosie approached Andrea and took a seat on the ground beside her, resting her arms on her bent legs. Andrea didn't even acknowledge her prescence.

Rosie cleared her throat. "I don't do eggshells and cotton wool. I also don't scare easy, so you can point a gun at me and I won't back down."

Andrea sniffed. "I know. It's why you're the one who keeps the Dixon's in line."

Rosie sighed. "I don't keep them in line. I just remind them that not everyone has adjusted to the fact that there isn't a damn line anymore."

"I know Daryl wants to shoot her," Andrea whispered, looking lovingly at her sister. 

"No, Daryl wants to shoot _it,_ " Rosie corrected.

Andrea's head snapped up to look at her, her brow furrowed and her eyes narrowed. "How can you be so cold?"

Rosie stared back, unflinching. "Because I've watched the people I love the most become the things they hated more than anything. I've watched them turn into the monsters they've hunted and I've had to put them down."

"Put them down?" Andrea laughed hollowly.

"They weren't dogs." Her voice cracked and she whispered, "she's not a dog."

"She's not Amy." Rosie shook her head and looked to the sky, a silent tear falling down her face as she blinked. "You want to hold on, you want to hope that you'll see a glimmer of her in there when she wakes up. You want to tell her your sorry and you want her to hear it, you want her to understand it, to forgive it. But it's all a lie, a dream, an illusion." Rosie paused and wiped the tear away, looking back at Andrea. "She's not coming back, and it's going to hurt no matter when you put that bullet in her head. But it'll probably hurt _her_ a little less if you let her die human."

Andrea's breathing hitched as Rosie stood up and walked away. Thirty seconds later, a shot rang out and Andrea had disolved into tears. Lori's eyes narrowed as Rosie passed her, but she just kept on walking, picking up the next dead body. She was so lost in her own little world that she hadn't heard the next predictable scuffle until it was over. She looked up to see Daryl walking towards her, frustration radiating off him, while the others were looking uneasily between themselves.

"What's going on?" Rosie asked, looking at the rest of group and then back to Daryl. 

"Jim's been bit," Daryl said, an irritated growl in his throat.

"Right. And I take it none of them have the balls to put him down," Rosie sighed.

"Ain't that simple," Daryl said. "You remember them lines you was talkin' 'bout?"

"Yeah..."

"It's like they're tryin' to draw the fuckin' things again," he grumbled. "'Cept they keep drawin' 'em with shit that blows away every chance it gets..."

"Amen to that," Rosie said with a hollow sort of scoff. 

Daryl looked at her then and stopped. "You okay?"

Rosie nodded her head, biting down hard on her lip to stop the tears from stinging her eyes. 

"Nah, ya ain't," he said, shaking his head for her. 

"It's not like you're all that well adjusted," she muttered. "They're out there burying their fucking dead and all you can do is tell them they deserved it," she chuckled. 

"They did," he said.

"No they didn't," she smiled softly, shaking her head at him this time. "You know it...you're just pissed 'cause of what happened to Merle."

"You tellin' me that if they'd left one o' your brothers up there, you wouldn't say they deserved this?" Daryl growled.

"I'm saying that if one of my brothers had been acting the way Merle was, I'd be saying _he_ deserved it," Rosie said.

"I don' believe you," Daryl said, scoffing. "I've heard the way you talk about 'em, I know how protective ya are of 'em..."

"You've never heard me talk about how I've played a hand in killing them both though," Rosie said with a sigh. "You've never heard me talk about the time I pushed Sam in the pit because right at the last second he lost control of Lucifer...he was gonna jump anyway but...I still pushed him. Or the time Dean became a demon and we had to cure him, nearly killed him doing it and wasn't sure if he'd survive it anyhow." Rosie shrugged as

Daryl looked at her strangely. "But they're alive," he said. 

"Death don't stick too well with us," Rosie said. "Point is, I didn't know that when I did it..." 

"You killed 'em? Or at least thought you were killin' 'em?" Daryl asked.

Rosie nodded. "Perks of being a hunter..."

"Don't sound like there's much perks at all," Daryl scoffed. 

Rosie snorted. "Now you're getting it."

  
"I say we put a pick axe in his head and be done with it," Daryl growled as the small group stood around, discussing Jim's...situation.

"Is that what you'd want if it were you?" Shane scoffed, hands on his hips. 

"Yeah, and I'd thank you while you did it," he answered. 

"Just salt me before you burn me," Rosie said. 

"Is that a thing? 'Cause that's the second time you've said that now," Glenn said, an eyebrow raised at her. 

"Yeah, it's called a Hunter's funeral. It stops us coming back as anything else," Rosie said. "Let's us stay dead."

"I hate to say it," Dale said, pausing as he spoke, "never thought I would...but maybe Daryl's right...and Rosie..."

Shane scoffed again. 

"Jim's not a monster, Dale, or some rabid dog. And he ain't dead yet," Rick said, looking pointedly at Rosie.

"Yeah, emphasis on the yet, for all those things," Rosie said, looking pointedly back at him.

"He's sick. A sick man. We start down that road, where d'we draw the line?" Rick asked. 

"Fuck the damn line man!" Daryl cried. "That line is fuckin' gone. Stop tryin' ta draw it in the sand while the goddamn tide is coming out!" He huffed and looked around at them. "Zero tolerance for walkers, or them to be."

"What if we could get him help?" Rick suggested. "I heard the CDC is working on a cure-"

Rosie scoffed this time. "The CDC don't even know what the fuck this thing is!"

"And I suppose you do?" Rick snapped. 

"Lori didnt tell you?" Rosie said with a frown. 

"Why the hell would I tell him some crazy made up story about monsters? You're assuming I believed you when you said it was a demonic virus," she said mockingly. 

"Fuck you bitch, you don't get to turn your nose up at my life or call me fucking crazy for it," Rosie snarled. 

"What is going on?" Rick asked, confused. 

"She's insane is what's going on," Lori said savagely. "Thinks monsters are real, like vampires and werewolves. Thinks this whole dead people walking thing is because of a virus created by a demon that was unleashed upon the world."

"What?" Rick looked strangely at Rosie. "Are you serious?"

Rosie looked up at Lori, feeling the scorn in her gaze. If she hadn't shut herself off from all these people, it might have hurt.

"Yeah, I'm serious," Rosie said. "Either that or I'm a serial killer."

Daryl sniggered.

"That ain't funny," Rick said.

"Wasn't supposed to be," Rosie answered.

"A demonic virus?" He asked, his tone unconvinced.

"I don't care if you believe me or not," she said. "Really couldn't give a shit. You go to the CDC if you want, but they won't have a cure. I can promise you that."

"If there's any government left, any structure at all, they'd protect the CDC at all costs, wouldn't they? Cure or no cure, wherever it came from," Rick said. "I think it's our best shot. Shelter, protection..."

"Okay, Rick, you want those things, all right?" Shane said, turning to his old partner. "I do too, okay? Now if they exist, they're at the army base. Fort Benning."

"That's a hundred miles in the opposite direction," Lori said, frowning at Shane.

Shane nodded. "That's right. But it's away from the hot zone. Now listen to me," he said, looking around at them all. "If that place is operational, it'll be heavily armed. We'd be safe there." 

"The military were on the front lines of this thing," Rick argued. "They got overrun. We've all seen that."

"Yeah, or they started shooting the shit out of people," Rosie said.

"The CDC is our best choice and Jim's only chance," he said.

Daryl let out a little huff and shook his head. "You go lookin' for asprin, do what ya need ta do. Someone needs some balls ta take care 'o this damn problem."

"Hey! Hey! Hey!" Shane called as Daryl turned around, pick axe in hand. 

Rosie groaned as she watched Daryl launch himself towards Jim, pick axe swinging above his head. Rick went barrelling after him, aiming his gun at Daryl's head and effectively issuing a stand off. 

"We don't kill the living," Rick said.

"That's funny, coming from a man who just put a gun to his head," Rosie growled.

"What she said," Daryl grunted.

"We may disagree on somethings," Shane said. "Not on this. You put it down. Go on."

Daryl dropped the axe with a huff and walked off, glaring at everyone as he went.

  
Rosie wondered through the brush, not more than a yard or two behind the treeline, just out of sight. She needed some time to clear her head and work out what she was going to do. If the group moved, she'd have to let her brothers know, hoping that the phones would still work.

She hadn't tried her luck with it yet, not since last talking to Dean. She was so scared that the handset wasn't going to work or the signal would be all dead, and she didn't want to have to face it yet. She knew it was only a matter of time. She turned as she heard footsteps approach her from behind.

"Hey," she murmured as Daryl fell into step beside her.

"Hey," he said. 

They seemed to be gravitating to one another a lot more recently, neither of them really sure why.

"You okay?" Rosie asked.

"Yeah..." he replied softly.

"Nah, you ain't," she said. "What's up? I'd have thought you'd be taking your crap out on the dead by now. You know, smashing their skulls in, all theraputic like?" Rosie grinned as he rolled his eyes and huffed at her. 

"That woman Carol, married to the sick sonofabitch Ed? She wan'ed to whack 'im," Daryl said. "Looked mighty theraputic for her too..."

"I'm not surprised," Rosie said. "There's a few people I'd probably have taken the opportunity to bash in."

"Yeah...me too," Daryl said. 

They carried on wondering along in silence, just listening to their footsteps as they walked. Rosie thought about her brothers and having to leave the campsite, how she was going to tell them where she was going if she couldn't get hold of them over the phone. Daryl was thinking about Merle and where he could possibly be since he hadn't bothered to come back to camp, which was new because usually vengence ran deep with him.

Eventually they'd meandered their way back to camp and helped load the bodies of the campers into the truck. Daryl jumped in and Rosie hopped up the other side, barely thinking about it and choosing to just follow Daryl. He was the only one who didn't seem on edge around her anymore. They drove up the hill a ways, to the spot where Rick and Shane were digging holes. Apparently Jim had already dug a load while they were running around Atlanta. 

"I still think it's a mistake not burnin' these bodies. It's wha' we said we'd do, right? Burn 'em all, wasn't that the idea?" he grumbled, looking between Rick and Shane. 

Shane shrugged, squinting up at him. "At first."

"The chinaman-"

"He's korean," Rosie interupted him. "He already told you that."

" _Korean_ gets all emotional," Daryl huffed, correcting himself but glaring at Rosie nonetheless. "Says it's not the thing to do, we just follow him along? These people need to know who the hell's in charge here, what the rules are."

"There are no rules," Rick said. 

"Oh, but there are lines that we can't cross?" Rosie said, giving him a flabbergasted look. "You can't have it both ways. Either there's rules or their ain't."

Lori put her hands on her hips and stepped into the conversation. "Well, that's the problem. We haven't had one minute to hold onto anything of our old selves. We need time to mourn and we need to bury our dead. It's what people do."

Rosie sighed deeply, nodding her head. Daryl barely grunted. 

"I know you don't like it," Lori said, looking at the two of them. 

"It isn't that," Rosie said. 

"Then what?"

"You assume that we think this is all a waste of time, and we can't understand why it's taking you all so long to adjust," Rosie said. "And for me at least, you've got it fucking wrong."

"Then how come it feels that way?" Lori countered, her eyes narrowed. 

"Because you haven't stopped to think about it through anyone else's eyes but your own," Rosie said. 

"But I suppose you've seen it through our eyes, right?" she scoffed, shaking her head in contempt. 

Rosie nodded. "And if I let you take your time every time you needed it, more of you would be dead." 

"You keep telling yourself that," Lori said, folding her arms and looking coldly at her. 

Rosie couldn't take the woman's blatant hostility anymore and opted to stalk off, round the back of the truck. Daryl heard the tailgate swing open and the sound of her boots hitting the truck bed as she jumped up into the back to begin unloading the bodies. He turned to Lori, Shane and Rick. 

"Did it ever occur to any o' you that for some of us, our lives were shit before the world went to shit?" he muttered. "We get why it's takin' a while to sink in, and we know what it's like to cling to good memories and old times...we just haven't had any for a lot longer 'an you."

"What does that have to do with anything?" Lori whisper-hissed, frowning in confusion and disbelief. 

"We've already learnt that timing is everything," he replied, his eyes down-cast. "It's the difference 'tween bein' hurt and bein' hidden. A waste of time to us ain't the same as a waste of time to you."

Lori looked somewhat chastised at that. Rick and Shane nodded as Daryl went to join Rosie at the back of the truck. He shook his head once he was out of sight, wondering what the hell had come over him that he'd share something like that. He knew, of course he knew, but he didn't want to admit that the woman was beginning to mean something to him. He didn't do relationships of any type, unless you counted whatever it was he had between him and Merle and God knows that wasn't exactly healthy even at the best of times.

Daryl helped Rosie unload the rest of the bodies, resting each of them in an individual grave. Shane and Rick helped and so did Glenn and T-dog once they'd joined them. Finally came Amy, carried by Andrea and Dale. It was like a mini-funeral was being conducted, everyone standing around. Rosie couldn't take it so she slunk off into the woods alone, knowing no one would miss her prescence even if they saw she was gone. 

A few steps into the woods and she heard someone following her. It wasn't Daryl, she knew the sound of his footsteps by heart, primarily because he barely made any. 

"What?" she asked of the body behind her. 

"Why'd you leave?" Lori asked, not quite as harshly as Rosie was expecting. "Why can't you stay and pay some respect?"

"Because it hurts," Rosie said, turning to look at her. She'd had enough of pussy-footing around her, so she decided it was time to be as blunt as she could. "It hurts to see so many people standing around a hole in the ground, tears in their eyes and pain in their hearts. It hurts because I know when my time's up there are only two people on this whole planet who will actually give a damn, and only two people who ever have. It hurts because I won't get bitten and die out slowly, I won't get to lie there while I fade away and people look on in shock and horror. I'll die fighting, I'll die being ripped to shreds, I'll die so someone else can live-"

"That's not a bad thing, is it? Saving someone else's life?" Lori frowned. 

Rosie scoffed and turned her eyes skywards, feeling the tears sting. "No, but it's kind of my whole life."

"That sounds kind of conceited," she said.

"I know but...it's the truth," Rosie said with a shrug. "Usually Dean would be here to talk me out if it."

"Out of what?"

"Out of that feeling of despair and disappointment," Rosie said. "Saving people, hunting things, the family business..." She sighed and shook her head. "Not a family business I'd have signed up for if I'd had a choice."

"Everyone has a choice," Lori said.

"No, everyone who grew up with parents who gave a shit, even if it was only a little shit, had a choice," Rosie corrected her.

"You're saying your parents never cared and that's your excuse for being like this?" Lori asked.

"It's not an excuse," Rosie whispered, her exhaustion evident in her tone and in her tears. "My parents didn't just not care for me. My Mom cared for me, she just cared about the drugs _more_. My Dad cared for me, he just cared about killing Azaezal _more_. My whole life has been about putting everyone else and everything else first. My life means less than everyone else's, it's expendable, and sometimes it grates on me and it gets to me in ways you wouldn't understand. And when it does, I'm allowed to feel that. I'm allowed to stomp it out of my system alone if I want to, you don't get to take that away from me or judge me for it."

Lori gaped at her a little bit, her eyes looking sad and brimming with pity. "Your life isn't expendable. It's doesn't mean less than anyone else's."

"Don't do that," Rosie growled, pointing a finger at her. "I don't need your pity and I sure as hell don't need your validation."

"But it's not," Lori whispered desperately. 

"Yeah, it is," Rosie said firmly. "Because if it weren't it would mean my life is a whole lot worse than I want to deal with, so it is."

"Rosie-"

"Look, the funeral...it's normal. It's a normal, terrible, social thing," Rosie said, really trying to get Lori to understand or stop talking, she didn't really care either way. "It's...I've never had normal Lori. I've never had a home I wasn't scared to live in, I've never had a place I wanted to stay in more than ten minutes at a time, I've never had people around me that didn't die..."

Lori cleared her throat, her eyes filled with tears as she looked at Rosie. 

"Lori, don't," Rosie said, glaring at the woman. "I walked away because it was another reminder that I don't belong, I don't fit in, I'm not normal and I never will be. I watch normal from the sidelines."

"Oh Rosie..." Lori sighed, coming towards her with sorrow. She reached out for her and was shocked when Rosie pulled away from her.

"You think I want a hug?" Rosie said. "You think after everything I just told you, I want a hug?"

"It's...it's all I know to do," Lori said. "I'm a mom, mom's give hugs."

Rosie let out a small chuckle. "Mine didn't, and it's too late to fix that now."

"Rosie..." Lori looked sadly at her. 

"Lori, I appreciate what you're trying to do, now you've learnt that my attitude isn't just a simple case of pschyotic narcissim," Rosie said with a sigh. "But I'm not interested. I am what I am and no matter how nice you are to me or how much you pity me till the day I die, you aren't going to be able to undo a lifetime's worth of psychological damage that wasn't even your fault to begin with." 

Lori nodded and sniffed. "I'm sorry..."

"Me too," Rosie said. She turned and walked off, listening as Lori's footsteps took her in the opposite direction and back towards the funeral. 

A few minutes later and Daryl appeared at her side. "You forgot yer gun Annie..."

"Thanks," Rosie murmured.

"And for the record, ya ain't expendable ta _me_..." He picked up his pace and walked past her, forcing her to shadow him like always. 

"Noted," she muttered, keeping up with him easily, like always. 

The two of them spent a while trekking through the undergrowth and hacking away at the forest, lost in their own thoughts. It wasn't till they worked their way back around the rest of camp that they saw everyone all packed up and ready to leave. 

"Where the hell have you two been?" Shane huffed, glaring at them. "This ain't no time for long romantic walks in the woods."

"Sure it is," Rosie said, cutting Daryl off before he'd even opened his mouth. "If not now, then when?"

Shane wasn't sure what to say. Instead he just shook his head. "Carol packed all your shit up and shoved it in Daryl's truck. We assumed you'd be sticking together even if you weren't coming with us..."

Rosie nodded. "You assumed right-"

"No he didn't," Daryl growled. "Why's everyone always thinkin' we're together or somethin'?"

"You seriously want me to answer that question?" Shane asked, an eyebrow raised. 

"No," Rosie said, shooting Daryl a look. "Come on, just get in the truck."

Daryl huffed and looked towards her as she walked off. "Where're you goin'?" 

"To get my car," Rosie said.

"And you wonder why people are thinking you're together," Shane muttered as he walked off. 

"You're car? Honey?" Daryl said. 

Rosie nodded. "Can't leave her behind. She's filled with too much treasure and has seen me through too many tough times."

Daryl shrugged and jumped up into the truck.

Rosie smiled and shook her head, knowing he'd got used to her silent company as much as she had his. She turned, hearing his voice calling to her. 

"Make sure ya stay close if yer comin' with us, okay?" he said, his cheeks a little pink. 

Rosie nodded. "Yeah, I'll be right behind you." 

Carol came jogging up to her quietly. "Uh...would you mind if I ride with you?"

"No, not at all," Rosie said, gesturing for her to get in the car. 

Rosie got behind the wheel and pulled her phone out, calling Dean. She waited with bated breath for it to start ringing, but nothing happened. Her eyes stung and a lump appeared quickly in her throat but she shook herself out of it quickly. As she pulled out of camp behind Daryl she noticed that Rick had written a message for Morgan on the screen of the sport's car Glenn had driven back from Atlanta, she reminded herself to thank him for adding her brother's names to it too.

  
It looked like they would make it to the CDC compound by dusk, minus Jim. Rosie stayed in her car the whole time and she could practically feel Lori's burning gaze on her. Shane and T-dog had to go for a little walk to find something to fix the radiator hose that had broken and was the reason they'd stopped to begin with. 

"You going to say goodbye to Jim?" Carol asked quietly. 

Rosie shook her head. "Didn't even know the guy."

"Yeah..." She nodded in agreement. 

A few seconds later and Daryl was walking towards them, motioning for Rosie to roll the window down. 

"This. This is why they think we're together," she said as he folded his arms over the window ledge and leant on them. 

"Shut up," he muttered, chewing the side of his thumb. "RV's got a busted hose."

"Yeah, I heard," Rosie said. "Shane came to tell me two minutes ago."

Carol snickered quietly beside them, smirking at Daryl a little bit. His ears turned pink and his cheeks darkened. 

"You wanna come join us? I got tunes," Rosie said.

"Pfft, like they're gonna be anythin' but decent," he snarked, shaking his head. He was beginning to understand that Rosie didn't do embarrasment, and she had the inane ability to make him feel less of his. It was one of the reasons he liked being around her so much, because he didn't feel like he was gonna look like an idiot every time he opened his mouth. 

"Hey! Classic rock is decent," Rosie argued. 

"Classic rock?" Daryl said in a tone that conveyed disbelief. 

"Yeah, and a bit of punk rock, metal, anything that sounds like people can actually play their intruments," Rosie said. 

Daryl looked at her for a second then shrugged, climbing into the backseat of the car. He lay down right across it, his hands behind his head, and looked pointedly at her. "You gonna play some music or not?" 

Rosie rolled her eyes at the man and turned the stereo system on, a fairly heavy track floating through the speakers but one that was a favourite of hers. She wound her window back up, wanting to muffle the sound as much as possible. She looked back to see Daryl chewing on the side of his thumb again as his foot tapped the door it was resting against. 

"I used to love this sort of stuff 'til I married Ed," Carol sighed. "He said it wasn't lady-like music."

Daryl scoffed at that. "My momma was the one who got me hooked on this shit."

"My brother was the one who did it for me," Rosie said. "My momma tried to get me hooked on something else," she muttered to herself, forgetting they were in such close quarters. "Sorry, didn't mean to bring the mood down."

Carol smiled. "It's fine. I started it."

Rosie smiled back at her, chuckling a little at their collectively absurd lifestyles even before the end of the world hit. "We're a right group, you know that?"

Carol chuckled along too, nodding. 

It wasn't long before Shane and T-dog came back with the stuff to fix the RV. Shane peered strangely in at Daryl, lounging on the backseat of Rosie's car, as he came to tell them they were ready to get moving. 

"Off you pop," Rosie said with a smirk, motioning for him to get out.

"Screw you," he grumbled, sitting up and getting ready to climb back out of the car. 

"Careful Dixon, that's exactly what they all think you're doing," Rosie sniggered, yelping as Daryl dug his fingers into her sides as he left.

"You wish Annie," he said, the tinest twitch of smile on his lips.

She snorted. "Like you'd know what to do with me if I did."

"I'd know exactly what ta do with ya," he said, leaning back over the window, his eyes full of mirth as they zeroed in on hers. "Shoot ya straight 'tween the eyes like I promised."

Rosie let out a proper laugh, the first one she'd had in forever. She looked up at Daryl, still chuckling and watched the first real smile she'd ever seen appear on his face. 

"Hey! Let's go, we ain't got time for you lovebirds!" Shane hollered, glaring at Daryl.

"Just give him the finger and go get back in the truck," Rosie sighed, showing Shane hers as Daryl took her advice and did the same.

"Try not to run him down sweetie!" Rosie called loudly after him, laughing again as he turned and gave _her_ the finger this time. 

The vehicles had soon all started up again and were moving along, everyone waving a sad goodbye to Jim who'd been left on the side of the road as he'd requested.

Rosie shook her head, feeling sick at the thought. 

"It ain't right," Carol said from beside her.

"It ain't," Rosie agreed.

"I saw Daryl go after him with the axe," she murmured.

"...Daryl has a do or die kind of attitude," Rosie said, not really sure what to say to that.

"So do you," Carol said, a smirk on her face again. "So what is going on between you and the surly but sweet Dixon."

"Sweet?" Rosie laughed. "Don't let him hear you say that. He's likely to have an aneurysm."

Carol chuckled and nodded. 

"Nothing is going on between us," Rosie said. "Nothing at all. I don't wish it was, neither does he, we're just...-"

"If you say friends, I know you're lying," Carol grinned. 

Rosie smirked and shook her head. "I don't know. It...I can't name it or label it. It's certainly nothing romantic."

"Yeah, but I wouldn't exactly call that last exchange platonic," Carol said.

Rosie shrugged. "I suppose not. But that doesn't mean something is going on."

"No, but it means something could." Carol gave her some wiggly side-eye.

Rosie laughed and shook her head again. "I don't know! He's just...he's easy to be around!"

"Neither of those Dixon brothers are easy to be around unless your name is Rosanna Winchester," Carol scoffed. 

"Daryl is!" Rosie argued lightly. "He just...he gets me. He doesn't really talk, he doesn't feel the need to fill silence, he doesn't want me to fit in or be the same..."

"I get the feeling that if Daryl was gonna fall in love it would be hard and deep and for the rest of his life," Carol said softly. "And it would take him a long ass time to realise it."

"You don't seriously think he's in love with me, do you?" Rosie said, panic in her tone.

"God no!" Carol laughed, alleviating some of her worry. "Same as I don't think you're in love with him."

"Good 'cause I'm not," Rosie said. 

"I just think that one day you could be, same as him," Carol said. She looked over to Rosie and smiled. "And if you do, you should hold on tight 'cause that kind of love was rare even before the apocolypse started."

Rosie flicked her gaze from the road to Carol and back again. "I think you're maybe too much of a romantic," she said, smiling at the woman.

"Maybe, but someone's gotta be," Carol laughed. "And I'd best make the most of it, 'cause I doubt this new world nurtures that idiology much."

Rosie nodded in agreement and the two women spent the rest of the journey going from one conversation to another with bouts of small silences in the middle. Rosie found herself liking Carol more and more the better she got to know her.

  
They pulled up to the CDC as night was beginning to fall. Rosie surveyed the area, bodies littering the floor and flies swarming everywhere. There was something wrong, she could feel it. She jumped out of the car and quietly followed everyone else as they approached the building. 

"All right, everybody," Shane said. "Keep moving. Go on. Stay quiet. Let's go. Okay, keep moving. Stay together." He ushered them along quietly, watching as they all moved towards the main door. 

Rosie was taking her time, staring at the bodies lying around and the blackened ground beneath them. She couldn't put her finger on it but something wasn't right. This was more than it seemed to be. As she caught up with the rest of the group she noticed the door was locked and shuttered. Everyone was looking at Shane, Rick and her. 

"Keep it together, come on," Shane said. 

"We're almost there baby. Almost there," Lori murmured to Carl.

"Nothing?" Shane frowned, looking at Rick. He pounded on the door.

"There's nobody here," T-dog said. 

"Then why are these shutters down?" Rick said. 

"Walkers!"Daryl cried, pulling his crossbow up to take the shot. 

Lori pulled Carl away, looking around in fear. 

"You led us into a graveyard!" Daryl snarled, shooting another walker in the head.

"He made a call," Shane barked back, defending his best friend. 

"It was the wrong damn call!" Daryl yelled, growling in frustration as the walker he'd just shot righted itself and carried on towards him, arrow sticking out of it's forehead. "What the hell?! Why ain't it goin' down? That was a damn headshot!"

Rosie's eyes widened as she looked around at the burn marks on the ground and suddenly it all made sense. She went sprinting back to her car, seeing the pattern of wings everywhere now the pieces had clicked into place; they were all too close together and she was too tired to have seen it immediately. She cursed how slow she'd been on the uptake and yanked the trunk of her car open, listening to the group arguing amongst themselves and trying to work out what to do next. Gathering up all the angel blades in the trunk she turned and headed back towards them. 

"Here!" she cried as Rick pounded on the door, yelling at whoever was inside. She tossed a blade to Daryl and to Shane, to T-dog and to Glenn.

"What're these?" T-dog asked, frowning at her.

"Angel blades," Rosie answered. "They'll kill the walkers that haven't gone down with headshots."

The four men armed with angel blades nodded and started taking down the dead with their new and improved weapons, a bit miffed when they're eyes glowed blue and shorted out. Rick was still banging on the door and the rest of the group were trying to get back to the cars. 

"I'm gonna try something, but I don't know if it'll work," Rosie called. "Just cover me, okay?"

They nodded at her and she grit her teeth as she sliced open her forearm with her knife and began painting a symbol on the shutter door. As soon as she was done she slammed her hand on it and a white light seemed to engulf them all. Once it was gone, nearly all the walkers were gone, as if they'd just disappeared. Rosie dropped to the ground, panting slightly and pressing her hand to the wound on her arm as blood dripped to the ground. Shane and Daryl took care of the remaining few geeks the normal way and everyone turned to look at her. Before anyone could say a word, the door behind Rosie creaked and started to move, huge flood-lights swtiched on, bathing them all in brightness. Rosie groaned and pushed herself up from the floor.

"Thanks for the save, jackass," she growled at the camera.  
  



	8. Chapter 8

"Daryl, you cover the back," Shane murmured as the group walked through the doors.

"Hello? Hello?" Rick called, looking around the space for the person that should be inside.

Dale looked back at Rosie. "Close those doors. Watch for walkers," he said, his eyes wide.

Rosie gave him a sarcastic salute as he looked towards Shane and Rick, closing the doors before ripping a sleeve off her shirt and going to tie it around her arm.

"Here," Daryl muttered, putting his crossbow down for a second and taking the fabric in his hands. He wrapped the sleeve around her arm and tied it tight.

"Thanks," she said, looking around the lobby warily and taking the angel blade from Daryl.

"Hello?" Rick called again.

The group spun around at the sound of a cocking gun. Rosie stared at the man, stood in a doorway with a rifle in his hands.

"Anybody infected?" he asked.

"One of our group was," Rick said. "He didn't make it."

"Why are you here? What do you want?" He looked around the group, his eyes coming to rest on Rosie.

"A chance," Rick said, drawing the man's attention back to himself.

"That's asking an awful lot these days," he said.

"I know." Rick nodded.

The stranger surveyed the room, looking at everyone. His eyes settled back on Rosie again.

"What are you?" he asked her.

"Human," she said, folding her arms in contempt.

"Hunter," he countered, smiling a little savagely.

Rosie shrugged, twirling the angel blade in her hand.

"You'll all submit to a blood test. That's the price of admission," he said, looking back around the group again.

"We can do that," Rick said, the group (bar Rosie and Daryl) nodding in agreement.

Jenner lowered his weapon and gestured towards the outside again. "You got stuff to bring in, you do it now. Once the door closes it stays closed."

None of them wanted to double back for anything, except Rosie.

"I won't be long, just give me a minute," she said.

"Take all the time you need, darlin'," Jenner said, smirking at her.

Rosie huffed as she ran back to her car, opening a duffel bag she kept in the trunk and stuffing it with as many weapons as she could. Daryl came up beside her, looking curiously at her.

"What's goin' on? Who is that guy? And what were those walkers we couldn't kill?" he asked.

"Angels, they were infected angels," Rosie said, panting as she moved as fast as she could. She flung one full duffel bag at Daryl and pointed to the scorch marks on the ground. "You see the pattern on the floor? The wings? It's what happens when an angel dies." She grabbed another bag, practically cleaning out the trunk of her car.

Moving to the inside, she sat in the drivers seat and rifled through the glove compartment, grabbing a few photos and sentimental pieces of crap. She took the keys from the car and leant her head on the roof as she closed the door. She clenched her teeth as she keyed 'I'm not dead' into the driver's side window, signing off with a rough date.

"Bye Honey," she murmured. "You did me good girl, but I got a feeling I'm not gonna be seeing you again..." She sighed and walked away.

"What's goin' on?" Daryl said again, pulling

Rosie back and locking eyes with her.  
"I don't know, I just know that I'm on edge," she said in a whisper.

"Okay..."

"Something isn't right," she murmured.

"Just...be on your guard okay? That guy, he isn't what he seems. But I don't know if he's angel or demon or something else yet..."

"What do we want him to be?" Daryl asked gruffly.

"Don't know," Rosie sighed. "On our side would do."

Daryl nodded. "He opened the door..."

"He opened the door after I banished the angel walkers away," Rosie said. "He knew what I was...I think he'd have let us die if he didn't."

"What would he want with a hunter?" Daryl asked quietly as they quickly made their way back to the compound doors.

Rosie shrugged. "Beats me, but he's going to shit himself when he finds out who I am."

"What? Why's that?" Daryl frowned.

"Because me and my brothers, we're like the best of the best," Rosie said. "Or the worst of the worst, depending on how you look at it."

 

Rosie and Daryl made it back to the lobby before he could say anything. They followed Jenner into an elevator and the doors closed shut.

"Vi, seal the main entrance. Kill the power up here," Jenner said.

The group listened to the building as it rattled and clanged.

Rick held his hand out, introducing himself to the scientist. "Rick Grimes."

Jenner looked away but responded all the same. "Dr Edwin Jenner."

The elevator hummed and Daryl looked at the rifle the Doctor was holding.  
"Doctors always go round packin' heat like that?" he asked.

"There were plenty left lying around. I familiarised myself. But you look harmless enough." He looked down at Carl. "Except you, I'll have to keep my eye on you." Carl smiled back at him.

Jenner chuckled, looking away and letting the smile die on his face. The elevator stopped and the doors opened, Jenner stepping out and leading them down a hallway.

"Are we underground?" Carol asked quietly.

"Are you claustrophobic?" he replied.

"A little."

"Try not to think about it,"he said.

Rosie came up behind her and gripped her shoulder in comfort. They followed the man into a large room, drenched in darkness. He spoke again, asking Vi to turn the lights on and after some more humming and beeping, the room lit up.

"Welcome to Zone 5," Jenner said, sweeping his arms out as he gestured to the whole room.

"Where is everybody?" Rick said, frowning. "The other doctors, the staff?"

"I'm it. It's just me in here," he said.

"What about the person you were speaking to?" Lori said. "Vi?"

"Vi, say hello to our guests," Jenner called. "Tell them, welcome."

"Hello guests. Welcome." A robotic voice answered his request and everyone seemed to deflate a little.

"I'm all that's left. I'm sorry," Jenner said.

Rosie stared uncertainly at him. "What's your real name?"

"What?" he said, frowning. She couldn't ignore the slight smirk on his face. "Dr Edwin Jenner. That is my real name."

"Cut the crap," Rosie snapped, her grip on the blade tightening even more. "Name."

"Asariel," he said, begrudgingly.

"Asariel," Rosie said, rolling the name around on her tongue. "Angel, right?"

Asariel nodded, bowing his head a little. "Who are you?"

"Rosie," she answered. "Rosie Winchester."

"Winchester?!" The angel cried. "Oh you've got to be kidding me!"

"'Fraid not," Rosie said with a sigh.

"What does that mean?" Shane said with a frown.

"Nothing," Rosie said quickly, not allowing Asariel chance to answer.

"Doesn't sound like nothing," Shane muttered.

"Her family are the best hunters around," Asariel said. He sighed and shook his head. "They're the sort of hunters that monsters have nightmares about."

"Why's that bad for you?" Rick frowned.

"Because angels are monsters too," Rosie said.

"Like hunters are anything different," Asariel scoffed.

"We know we're not, but that's the difference," Rosie seethed. "We aren't still pretending to be mankind's salvation."

The room fell silent for a few seconds before Rosie sighed and shook her head, pacing the floor.

"What's going on?" she asked Asariel. "You must have been stationed here for a reason?"

"The angels were hoping that by combining a manmade cure with a supernatural one, we could actually stop this thing from wiping out the world," Asariel explained.

"I take it that didn't work," Rosie said.  
"Understatement of the millenia," Asariel sighed. "They called us all back but I guess I was a little late to the party, the gates closed and they haven't been opened since."

"They shut heaven?" Rosie frowned.  
Asariel nodded.

"And you haven't heard from them since?"  
He shook his head.

"You wouldn't have heard anything from or about Castiel?" Rosie asked hopefully.

"No, only that he made it up there," Asariel said. "And I only know that because I'm the only angel left down here. Well...only uninfected angel."

Rosie sighed in defeat, nodding. "Sorry about that. Sucks."

Asariel nodded again and looked around the room. "Let's get those bloodtests going."

  
Andrea was the last to finish with giving blood. Rosie couldn't understand why Asariel was even bothering. As Andrea had pointed out, anyone with the virus would have a fever already and the guy was an angel, so it wasn't like he couldn't sense it.

"It makes me feel human," he murmured, looking up at Rosie. "The more human I feel the less insane I seem to feel."

Rosie shook her head and smirked. "I'm so far past sane it's barely even funny anymore."

Asariel shrugged and laughed. "D'you want me to heal your arm?" he said. "I hadn't thought about it till now but that's gotta be quite a deep cut you gave yourself."

Rosie looked down at her arm and tipped her head. "Yeah, I suppose so. I mean, it would save having to sew it up."

Asariel nodded and stepped towards her, holding his hand out above her cut. A bright white light shone out from under it and a few seconds later, Rosie's arm was healed. She unwrapped the makeshift bandage and smoothed her palm across her skin. Daryl frowned while everyone else seemed to look at Asariel in awe.

A few hours later and they were all seated around a rather large table, eating pasta and drinking wine. Dale had just given Carl a taste and the kid wasn't impressed. Rosie was even enjoying the atmosphere.

"Well, just stick to soda pop there, bud," Shane said, grinning at the boy.

"Not you Glenn," Daryl said, looking across the table from his position perched on a counter.

"What?" Glenn said, smiling as his brow furrowed slightly.

"Keep drinkin' little man. I wanna see how red yer face can get!" Daryl said, everyone laughing with him. Glenn snickered and shook his head.

Rosie rolled her eyes and took the bottle of wine that Daryl offered her, bringing it to her lips and taking a decent mouthful. She'd noticed that Asariel wasn't enjoying the festivities and she wasn't the only one. Rick stood up and chinked his glass.

"It seems to me we haven't thanked our host properly," he said.

T-dog grinned. "He is more than just our host."

"Hear hear!" Dale cried.

"Here's to you Doc!" Daryl cried, clearly forgetting what Rosie had said about staying on guard. "Booyah!"

She snorted and took another swig of the wine. "Booyah!" she cried, laughing along with Daryl.

"Booyah!" Dale joined in.

"Thank you. Thank you, Doctor," Rick said.

"Booyah!" T-dog said, raising his glass up.

Glasses clinked again and everyone drank, Daryl leaning slightly into Rosie, his gaze flicking to hers for just a second. She smiled softly and set her attention back on the table.

"So, when you gonna tell us what the hell happened here Doc?" Shane asked, looking up at the man. "All the-the other doctors, angels, whatever, that were supposed to be figuring out what happened. Where are they?"

"We're celebrating, Shane," Rick said, throwing his friend a look. "Don't need to do this now."

"Woah, wait a second. This is why we're here, right?" Shane said. "This was your move-supposed to find all the answers. Instead we...we found him." Shane chuckled humourlessly as he hitched his thumb at Asariel. "Found one man, why?"

"I'm not a man. And well, when things got bad, a lot of people just left, went off to be with their families," he said. "And when things got worse, when the military cordon got overrun, the rest bolted."

"What about the other angels?" Rosie asked.

"They got called home. They left one of us in every station, just in case. But they called the rest back," Asariel said, swallowing thickly.

"Every last person just left?" Shane said, unconvinced.

Asariel shook his head. "No. Many couldn't face walking out the door. They...opted out. There was a rash of suicides..." He paused, looking at the floor and twisting his wine glass by the stem. "That was a bad time."

"You didn't leave. Why?" Andrea spoke up.

"I just kept working," he said. "Hoping to do some good." He looked pointedly at Rosie and she nodded.

Glenn huffed and shook his head, his eyes catching Shane's. "Dude, you are such a buzzkill. _Man_..."

Daryl nudged Rosie as the table began to hum with conversation, although not as enthusiastically as before.

"Why'd he stay?" he murmured.

"Huh?"

"The Doc. Why'd he stay?" Daryl said again. "He gave ya a look..."

Rosie looked up at Daryl. She slowly leant in so her lips were barely an inch from his ear. "The only thing that can kill an angel is an angel. He needs an angel blade to opt out and he doesn't have one..."

She pulled back, noting Daryl had gone weirdly tense but decided not to think anything of it. Her eyes flicked to his and he seemed to relax a little, nodding at her before turning back to the group.

Once they'd all finished, Asariel showed them where they'd all be sleeping, explaining how most of the facility was powered down.

Rosie took in the layout of the place, smiling at both Glenn and T-dog's reaction to hearing they had hot running water. She took off back to the dining area once the tour had ended, waiting for everyone else to settle down for the night before she grabbed a shower, if she felt safe enough to do so.

"Was wonderin' where ya were," Daryl said, a lazy smile on his face.

"Just waiting for everyone else to switch off so I can shower," she said.

"I'll watch out for you, if you wan'?" he offered.

Rosie smiled and ducked her head, playing with her fingers. "Yeah, actually, that might be kinda nice..."

"Been a long time since any o' us had the luxury," he chuckled softly. After a pause he continued. "I'm still on guard, promise."

Rosie grinned up at him, shaking her head. "It's cool Daryl, you deserved to blow off some steam."

"Yeah, and so do you," he said. "'Sides, would you really relax if I was on edge?"

Rosie shook her head.

"Exactly," he said. "Come on, let's get ya showered."

Rosie sniggered as she picked her stuff up and wondered through to the showers. "You're so lucky no one can hear you, honestly," she chuckled.

"I know," Daryl grinned. "But I like not havin' to watch what I say 'round you."

Rosie looked up at him in shock and he shrugged, his ears turning pink and his cheeks darkening. He muttered something incoherent as his eyes looked everywhere but at her.

"...me too," Rosie said softly, her own cheeks darkening as his eyes snapped to hers. "I..." She gazed up at him, unable to look away. "There aren't many people in this world that I trust..."

"You sayin' I'm one of 'em?" he asked.

"Yeah, I am," she said.

He nodded. "I got you..."

"I got you too..." she murmured.

He stared at her for a little bit longer before nodding again and then looking up at her with a cheeky sort of smirk.

"You'd best get in that shower 'fore someone comes round that corner an' accuses us 'o makin' goo-goo eyes at each other," he snickered.

Rosie laughed and shrugged. "They can say what they want. I know the truth." She turned and walked towards the shower stalls.

"And what might that be?" he called after her.

"That it's no one else's business but our own," she called back.

"Damn straight!" he hollered. He heard her giggling as the water came on and listened to the sound of the shower as it ran for several minutes, his back turned to the stalls. He shook his head, aware that there was a stupid smile on his face and knowing the drink had something to do with it, but unable to quell it nonetheless.

Rosie stood under the running water, refraining from letting out any audible sighs that could be construed as sex noises. She didn't want to make Daryl uncomfortable, he was a man no matter how much self control he possessed. She washed quickly, not wanting to stay particularly vulnerable for too long. As she turned the water off she realised the mistake she'd made.

"Shit!" she hissed, looking around her and not sure what to do.

"You okay?" Daryl called.

"Yeah..." She groaned, realising there was only one thing she could do. "You couldn't find me a towel by any chance, could you?"

Daryl's snickers could be heard well into the hallway and down the corridor. She folded her arms across her bare chest and shrunk back into the corner of the stall, feeling ridiculous. A few minutes later and she heard him stalking back. A hand shot into the cubicle and Rosie stifled a small scream.

"Fucking hell Dixon! You frightened the fucking life out of me!" She snatched the towel from his hand and wrapped it around herself, pulling the shower curtain back.

Daryl was stood opposite with a scowl on his face. "What happened?"

"Nothin'," he grunted.

Rosie rolled her eyes and rung her hair out. Daryl barely looked at her as she picked her clothes up off the floor, threw her duffel bags at him and made her way towards one of the empty rooms Asariel had shown them. He followed silently behind, dumping her bags on the floor and walking straight back out.

Rosie sighed, closing the door behind him. Something had happened between going to get her a towel and bringing it back to her.  
She soon found out what that was when she left her room and found most of the rest of their group still drinking wine and all lounging around on a group of sofas.

"You found a towel then," T-dog sniggered.

Rosie moaned. "You wound him up, didn't you?"

"Maybe," Glenn laughed.

"What is wrong with you lot?" Rosie sighed albeit in amusement, grabbing some chocolate out of a cupboard and starting to munch on it.

"Oh come on," Jackie grinned. "He's just so sensative about it. It's not like any of us care that you're together."

Rosie shook her head. "We aren't together."

T-dog smirked. "Nope, they're something else entirely." He howled with laughter as Rosie scowled at him.

Glenn then explained to those who didn't get it what had happened at the home in Altanta.

" _Something else entirely_ is a good way to describe you two," Carol hummed, smiling at Rosie. "There definitely isn't a label for you pair."

"Have you even kissed yet?" Glenn asked.

"No," Rosie said flatly. "We haven't even hugged yet!" She gasped sarcastically. "Shock horror!"

T-dog rolled his eyes. "You know, when the leveè breaks, it's gonna break fucking hard."

"What is that supposed to mean?" Rosie huffed.

"It means y'all be doing it up against the nearest wall," he sniggered.

"Oh screw you T," Rosie said. "You don't know what you're talking about."

She found she wasn't actually in the mood for banter, so walked back out into the hallway and towards her little room, running smack dab into the aforementioned redneck she was being heckled about. Rosie backed up, starting to apologise before realising that Daryl had just been in the shower. His hair was dripping wet, his shirt was sticking to him like he'd got dressed in haste and he smelt amazing. The expression 'sex on a stick' came to mind.

"Sorry..." she mumbled, unable to look him in the eyes. She went to dart around him, knowing her face was flushed and she was all flustered. She figured she could go and die a little inside and then in the morning forget it had ever happened. As she carried on walking down the corridor she heard Daryl snicker softly behind her.

"Now you know why I left you so fast..." he muttered, shooting her the smallest smirk as she turned to gape at him. He winked before disappearing into another room.

Carol came around the corner, frowning at her. "Everything okay?"

Rosie nodded and hummed, ducking back into her own room and attempting to steady her breathing.

  
Rosie barely slept all night. She tossed and turned irritably but was loathe to get up, knowing Asariel would be prowling the facility somewhere since angels don't sleep. By the time morning rolled around, she was more fed up than ever. She left her room later than most, despite being up before everyone else.

"Someone slept well," T-dog chuckled, grinning at her as she walked in the room.

"Someone actually didn't sleep at all," Rosie mumbled.

"What? Why?" Dale asked. "It's the first time we've ever been safe enough to relax!"

"Force of habit I guess," Rosie sighed, knowing fine full well it was because she sure as hell didn't feel safe.

Daryl came ambling in a few minutes later, Rick not far behind him.

"Hello," Rick murmured, taking a seat at the table.

"Morning," Dale said, smiling at him.

Carl frowned at his dad. "Are you hungover? Mom said you would be."

"Mom is right," Rick said with a chuckle.

"Mom has that annoying habit," Lori said, smiling.

T-dog showed Rick the breakfast he was preparing. "Eggs. Powered, but I do 'em good."

Glenn moaned from where he was sat at the table, his head in his hands.

"I bet you can't tell," T-dog teased.

Dale laughed, looking between Glenn and T-dog while Jackie took pity on the poor boy and rubbed his shoulders. T-dog plated up his powdered eggs and passed them out among the group, placing a portion in front of Glenn.

"Protein helps the hangover," he said.

Glenn moaned again.

Rick held up a bottle of asprin and looked around. "Where'd all this come from?"

"Asariel," Lori said.

"Could you help me, please?" Rick held the bottle of pills out to his wife.

Lori smirked as she unscrewed the cap. "He thought we could use it."

"Thank you," Rick sighed, taking the pills back.

"Some of us, at least," Lori added, looking at Glenn. His head was still on the table while Jacqui tried her best to make him feel better.

"Don't ever ever ever let me drink again," he moaned.

Rosie snorted. "Dude, you were too fucking funny to promise you that."

Shane suddenly appeared in the room and the atmosphere seemed to stiffen.

"Hey," he muttered, coming over to the table.

"Hey," Rick replied. "Feel as bad as I do?"

Shane found the coffee and cups, fixing himself up a mug. "Worse," he mumbled.

T-dog peered over at him, confused. "What the hell happened to you? Your neck?"

Shane frowned and lifted a hand up to touch the scratch, realisation dawning on him as his hand touched the marred skin. "I must have done it in my sleep," he said.

Rosie frowned and felt Daryl tense up.

"Never seen you do that before," Rick said.

"Me neither," Shane said, chancing a glance at Lori he added, "not like me at all."

Lori didn't look up at him and Rosie felt her stomach drop. Something had happened and it wasn't something good. If Rosie had to bet, she'd say it was something Rick would kill him for if he ever found out. Before anyone could comment further, Asariel walked in.

"Morning," he said.

"Hey doc," Shane said, lifting his mug in greeting. Everyone else muttered a morning response as he came towards the table.

"Didn't see you last night," Asariel said, looking at Rosie. "I was sort of looking forward to a bit of overnight company..."

"What?" Daryl growled.

"Angels don't sleep," Rosie explained.

T-dog whistled. "You wanna be careful man," he said, looking at Asariel. "You're likely to get an arrow in the ass talking about Daryl's girl that way," he snickered.

"Daryl's girl?" Asariel frowned, confused.

"Imma shoot _you_ in the ass ' you don't shut up man," Daryl huffed, folding his arms and glaring at T-dog.

"He's teasing Asariel," Rosie said, shaking her head.

"I thought hunters didn't sleep much," Asariel said, giving Daryl and T-dog a puzzled look.

"We don't, but it doesn't mean we're always in the mood for company," Rosie said with a shrug.

Asariel sighed and nodded. "Fair enough. Maybe you could spend tonight with me instead?"

T-dog smirked and looked at a scowling Daryl. Rosie gave him a warning glance and looked back at the angel.

"Maybe," she said.

"Uh, look, doctor," Dale said, choosing to step in before things got anymore awkward or heated. "I don't mean to slam you with questions first thing-"

"But you will anyway," Asariel said.

"We didn't come here for the eggs," Andrea spoke up, her tone flat and her eyes hard.

Asariel motioned for them all to follow him and he took them back to the big room they'd first seen when they'd followed him down the night before.

"Give me a playback of TS-19," Asariel said.

"Playback of TS-19," Vi spoke.

There was a succession of beeping and images popped up on screen, a video loading on the right hand side.

"Few people ever got chance to see this," Asariel said. "Very few."

The group were scattered around the room, walking closer to the screen and settling in their spaces as they watched the monitor and looked at Asariel. Rosie stuck her hands in her back pockets, staring intently at the evidence the angel had managed to collect. The image flashed a few times, revealing layer after layer of the head on the screen.

"Is that a brain?" Carl asked, looking at Asariel.

"An extraordinary one," he said, almost smiling at the kid. His smile faded as he looked back at the screen. "Not that it matters in the end." He spoke to the computer again. "Take us in for EIV."

"Enhanced internal view," Vi spoke back, the screen changing as the camera panned around so the person was lying down. It seemed to dive right into the person, all the way to the middle where blue lights pulsed around the image like electricity. Everyone was watching with baited breath.

"What're those lights?" Shane asked.

"It's a person's life," Asariel said, turning to look at them all in wonder. "You humans...these are your memories, your experiences. It's everything. Somewhere in all that organic writing, all those ripples of light, is you." He sort of smiled at them. "The thing that makes you unique and...human."

"You don't make sense, ever?" Daryl said, frowning at the screen a little, his hands tucked into his armpits as he watched.

"Those are synapses. Electric impulses in the brain that carry all the messages. They determine everything a person says, does or thinks from the moment of birth to the moment of death," he said, looking back at the screen in awe.

"Death? That's what this is?" Rick said, walking closer. "A vigil?"

"Yes," Asariel said, barely able to take his eyes away. "Or ra-rather the playback of the vigil."

"This person died? Who?" Andrea asked, moving forwards too.

"Test subject 19. Someone who was bitten and infected...and volunteered to have us record the process." His eyes were still on the screen. "Vi, scan forward to the first event."

"Scanning to first event," Vi replied.

The screen flashed and a loading window was displayed. As it disappeared the group watched as the once bright brain began to dim and a series of black lines extended from the base of the neck out into the mind.

"What is that?" Glenn said, not knowing what to think.

"It invades the brain like meningitis. The adrenal glands hemorrhage, the brain goes into shutdown, then the major organs. Then death. Everything you ever were or ever will be...gone."

Andrea's head dipped, unable to look at the screen.

"Is that what happened to Jim?" Sophia asked quietly, looking at her mom.

Carol nodded. "Yes."

Everyone had tears in their eyes or running down their face. Asariel looked at Andrea as she let out a soft sob.

"She lost somebody two days ago. Her sister," Lori explained.

Asariel nodded. "I know how devastating that must be."

Rosie had ignored everyone in favour of studying the screen, something only Glenn and Daryl seemed to be aware of. It wasn't till she'd climbed up onto the closest desk, peering at the image, that anyone else really noticed.

"It's like...it's like the darkness," Rosie mumbled.

"What?" Asariel said, looking strangely at her.  
"It's like the weird, black-vein plague Amara reigned down a few years ago," Rosie said, looking at the angel. "That goddamn Prince of Hell had no idea what the fuck he was playing with."

"What do you mean? What's your theory?" Asariel asked, clearly buzzed to be talking about this with someone who understood the supernatural.

"Sam and Dean said it was a modified Croatoan virus, but..." Rosie shook her head.

"It can't be," Asariel said. "It's infecting demons too and if it was Croatoan, they'd be immune."

"Exactly," she said, suddenly thinking of something. "When you were doing blood tests, what were you looking for?"

"Decaying cells," Asariel said. "That's what the virus does to the brain," he pointed at the screen. "But it's like...you need to see what happens when they wake up." He watched her nod and spoke to the computer again.

"Vi, scan to the second event."

"Scanning to second event," Vi said.

Everyone watched as the screen loaded again and the light-less brain came back on screen. Asariel explained what was happening as they all watched with baited breath.

"The resurrection times vary wildly. We had reports of it happening in as little as three minutes. The longest we heard of was eight hours," he said. "In the case of this patient, it was two hours, one minute...seven seconds."

A red glow began to form at the base of the neck, pulsating slowly. It spread out a little but not far, shooting down the body in small waves too. Everyone looked in shock at the screen.

"It restarts the brain?" Lori said in disbelief.

"No, just the brain stem," Asariel said. "Bascially, it gets them up and moving."

"But they're not alive?" Rick said, his tone more comment than question.

"You tell me," Asariel said, gesturing to the screen.

Rick shook his head. "It's nothing like before. Most of that brain is dark."

"Dark, lifeless, dead." Asariel looked at the man before turning to Rosie. "The frontal lobe, the neocortex, the human part...that doesn't come back. The you part. Just a shell driven by mindless instinct."

The head started moving side to side, reanimation obviously occuring. The barrell of a gun appeared and a white hot, hollow line formed straight through the brain, tearing through the red clusters of light and leaving the mind dark. The test subject stilled again.  
Rosie blinked and looked back at Asariel.

"God, what was that?" Carol frowned.

"He shot his patient in the head. Didn't you?" Andrea said, turning her head towards him but not looking at him. "You have no idea what it is do you?"

"It's demonic, but it's also not," Asariel said. "There's something human about it too." He shook his head. "It could be microbial, viral, parasitic, fungal..."

"Or the wrath of God?" Jacqui spoke up.

"There is that," Asariel said.

Rosie snorted and shook her head. "It's not the wrath of God. God checked out years ago, well before his sister showed up. That man has had no interest in this world or any of our pathetic little lives for a long time."

"How can you be so sure?" Jacqui challenged.

"Because the asshole about as much told me!" Rosie said.

"You spoke with God?" Asariel said, gaping at her.

"Yeah, and God doesn't give a shit," Rosie huffed exasperatedly. "He seemed to think we're better off without his intervention and then put all his faith, hope and trust in my brothers and me because we've managed to save the world a hundred times already so what's once more?!" She knew she was ranting and raving but it was hard to stop. "Your God put the weight of his whole world on the shoulders of three measely little human beings, so no, it's not the wrath of God, because for God to be wrathful he'd actually have to fucking care."

Asariel looked pained and then stared back up at the screen. "So what is it?"

"It's Asmodeaus playing mad scientist and getting everyone killed," Rosie said, sighing as she let the anger in her subside. "It's one idiot making one fucking mistake with no one there to stop him."

"What does it look like to you?" Asariel asked, trying to see what she could see.

Rosie sniffed and jumped down from the desk. She pointed up at the screen and looked at him.

"You said it had manmade elements, right?"  
Asariel nodded.

"So he took meningitis and used it as a base, he added the parts of the Croatoan virus that spread it through bodily fluids and meant it would infect other creatures too, not just humans, and then he added parts of Amara's plague, making it infectious to angels and demons alike. The Croatoan part is the bit that glows red when the body is switched back on, that kind of light is demon through and through," Rosie said, sort of working it out as she went. "The black bits are the darkness, they're the conduit...only they don't reach out far enough to allow him to control anything!" She cried, feeling somewhat victorious as she worked it out as she went.

"What?" Several people looked at her in confusion.

"Amara, the darkness, God's sister! Her plague, the black-vein thing that came with the fog," she said, looking primarily at Asarial since she knew no one else had a fucking clue what she was going on about. "She could control the minds of others with it. That's what As-the-Ass was trying to do. He was trying to infect the world with a mind control virus, only it backfired and instead, the bits of the Croatoan virus that turned people rabid and insane combined with the bits from the darkness that did the same thing. It destroyed the brain and all the cells in it, effectively killing off the person, but it couldn't bring back enough of it's humanity to curb it's base instincts and desires..."

"How did you stop those viruses?" Glenn asked, shifting Rosie's attention.

Her face fell and she cleared her throat. "We didn't...the Croatoan virus just disappeared and Amara was stopped by God."

"So you're saying there isn't a cure," Andrea said. "You can't bring all these people back?" She looked personally disappointed with the hunter.

Rosie shook her head. "The virus killed them all. Once those lights go out, there's no bringing them back."

"And yet your family manage it just fine," she argued.

"My family never wanted to come back," Rosie said. "And you have no idea what happened to them...where they were..."

"If they'd saved the world as many times as you say they did, surely they'd be in heaven," Jacqui said, hard eyes coming to rest on Rosie.

Asariel scoffed. "It doesn't work that way," he said. "The only time those boys ever got to heaven, they were kicked right back out again and told to soldier on. Keep doing what you're doing boys..."

Rosie nodded at the angel, her eyes stinging with tears.

"If that's how this virus works, or you think it works," Glenn said, "why does it affect non-humans differently?"

Rosie cleared her throat. "Our brains and all those little lights that make us human? When something hurts them they go out and we die. For other things, that's not the case. If you become a werewolf, the thing that makes you a werewolf, the thing that pumps that condition around your body is your heart. Killing your brain doesn't make you anyless wolf unless you're using something silver, because silver is toxic to a werewolf and the blood will carry traces of it back to the werewolf's heart." She looked around the group, trying to work out if they understood.

"Angels, they only appear human because they take human hosts, same as demons. This virus must also trap them inside, so they can't leave. If you CT scanned an angel like the doctors did to TS-19, the synapses wouldn't be firing, they'd be stupidly bright the whole time, all of the them. Demons would be like the glowing red of the walkers, but everywhere. And the synapses that lead to the rest of the body, that send the signals through the brain stem, they're still being used to send those innate, basic signals to the body. So when the walker in question isn't human, they still have those superhuman abilities to fuel their most basic bodily desire...to eat." She looked around to see if they understood.

"That is some scary shit right there," Glenn murmured.

"Jesus," Jacqui said, her hand coming up to cover her mouth.

"Vi, power down the main screen and work stations," Asariel said.

"Powering down the main work stations," she answered.

"Man, I'm gonna get shitfaced drunk again," Daryl huffed walking out of the room.

"Asariel, I know this has been taxing for you and I hate to ask one more question, but...that clock..." Dale pointed at the clock on the door. "It's counting down. What happens at zero?"

"The basement generators, they run out of fuel," Asariel said, avoiding Rosie's eyes.

"And then?" Rick asked.

Asariel just walked out of the room, ignoring Rick completely. Rosie's blood started to run cold. Something was really really wrong.

"Vi, what happens when the power runs out?"

"When the power runs out, facility-wide decontamination will occur," Vi answered.

Rick, Shane, T-dog and Glenn all ran down the stairs, looking for the generator. Rosie ran for her room and the two bags full of weapons she refused to leave behind.

  
"Emergency lighting is on," Vi's voice sounded throughtout the facility.

Everyone seemed to converge on the hallway all at once. Rosie could hear them from the other side of her door.

"Why's the air off?" Carol asked.

"And the lights in our room?" Lori said.

"What's goin' on? Why's everythin' turned off?" Daryl said.

Rosie came out of her room just in time to see Asariel snatch the whiskey bottle from Daryl's hand as he passed him. She followed the group as they trailed after Asariel.

"Energy use is being prioritized," he said, stalking back to the main room.

"Air isn't a priority?" Dale asked. "Or lights?"

Asariel merely took a swig from Daryl's stolen bottle. "It's not up to me," he said. "Zone 5 is shutting itself down."

"Hey! Hey! What the hell does that mean?" Daryl growled, his patience wearing thin.

Asariel carried on walking, ignoring everyone as he did. The power began to whirr down.

"Hey, man, I'm talkin' to you!" Daryl cried, his agitation evident. "What d'you mean it's shuttin' itself down? How can a buildin' do anythin'?"

As they walked the plaforms, Shane, Rick, T-dog and Glenn came running back up from the basement.

"You'd be surprised," Asariel said.

Lori called down to Rick from the walkway above and he motioned for her to wait, running up to meet her and the rest of the group. Asariel walked straight passed him and back up the steps on the othe side to the main room.

"Asaerial, what's happening?" Rick asked pleadingly as he followed the man through into the open space.

"The system is dropping all nonessential uses of power. It's designed to keep the computers running to the last possible second. That started as we approached the half-hour mark. Right on schedule," he said.

He took a swig from the bottle again and stomped up the steps to the workstations, everyone following him and crowding around him. Rosie looked on uncertainly, folding her arms and trying to work out his game plan. Asariel held the bottle back out to Daryl who snatched it from him angrily.

"Listen, we gotta get out of here now," Rosie called.

The group stared at her for a few seconds before Rick nodded.

"To hell with it," he said. "I don't even care. Lori, grab our things. Everybody get your stuff. We're getting out of here, now!"

Alarms began blaring as everyone started to move.

"What's that?" Shane and Carl both spoke, looking around.

"Thirty minutes to decontamination," Vi spoke serenly.

"Doc, what's goin' on here?" Daryl growled, pacing like a caged animal.

Asariel took his badge and scanned it, typing a code into the security pad attached to one of the work stations.

"Everybody, y'all heard Rick," Shane shouted.

"Get your stuff and let's go! Go now! GO!" Rick cried.

"Let's go!" T-dog said.

"Come on!" Glenn said, racing towards the exit.

Rosie had stood frozen since Asariel scanned his badge, her eyes dead set on his. The security door that led to the outside, back out of the CDC, started closing.

"No." Glenn looked at the door in disbelief and dispair. "Did you just lock us in? He just locked us in!"

Asariel turned back to the workstation and dropped into one of the chairs, breaking eye contact with Rosie. He turned the montior on and cleared his throat.

"We've hit the thirty minute window," he said. "I'm recording."

Rosie dropped her duffel bags and began rooting around in it quietly, looking for a knife.

Lori called to Carl and he ran to her, fear evident on his face.

Daryl made a break for Asariel, his face contorted in rage. "You son of a bitch!" he roared.

Rick pointed at him, calling to Shane to stop him.

"You locked us in here!" Daryl barked, still storming towards the angel.

"No! Stop! Don't!" T-dog cried, looking at Rosie for some help.

Rosie was not paying any attention to the scene that was unfolding. She'd taken back all the angel blades, so she knew no one could actually kill the self-righteous prick.

Daryl was almost to him. "You lying-"

"No no no no!" Shane caught him and pulled him back, Rick coming to help him. "Rosie! Could really use some help here!"

Daryl advanced on Asariel again.

"Wait! No! No, don't do it!" T-dog yelled in anguish.

Rick held Daryl back even as the man tried to do the angel in with the bottle still in his hand.

"Asariel, open that door now!" Rick cried.

"There's no point," Asariel answered dispondantly. "Everything topside is locked down. The emergency exits are sealed."

"Well open the damn things," Dale pleaded.

"That's not something I control. The computers do. I told you once that front door closed, it wouldn't open again. You heard me say that. It's better this way," he said.

Daryl looked straight up at Rosie who'd found her knife. She looked back down at him, seeing the fear and the pain in his eyes.

"You knew," he said, calling up at her.

"No, I didn't," Rosie said, shaking her head.

"You said goodbye to your goddamn car!" he shouted.

"Daryl, I swear, I didn't know he was going to do this!" Rosie cried, tears in her eyes. "I've been hellbent on finding my brothers, do you honestly think I'd have led us all down here just to get blown up?!"

"What?!" Several people cried out in horror.

"You know what this place is!" Asariel shouted, standing up and glaring at them all. "God, you humans are insufferable! This place protected the public from very nasty stuff! Weaponised smallpox! Ebola strains that could wipe out half the country! Stuff you didn't want getting out! Ever!" He took a deep breath and sat back down. "In the event of a catastrophic power failure, in a terrorist attack for example, H.I.Ts are deployed to prevent any organisms from getting out."

Rosie had found her knife and was now slicing her forearm open again. Her brothers had always used their palms and she could never figure out why, there were so many nerve endings there and it took _forever_ to heal on account of how the skin was always moving.

"H.I.Ts?" Rick said, frowning. Rosie was just glad Asariel was distracted.

"Vi, define," Asariel commanded.

Vi's voice permeated the room. "H.I.Ts...high-impulse thermo baric fuel-air explosives consist of a two-stage aerosol ignition that produces a blast wave of significantly greater power and duration than any other known explosive except nuclear. The vaccum-pressure effect ignites the oxygen at between 5000 degrees and 6000 degrees and is useful when the greatest loss of life and damage to structures is desired."

"It sets the air on fire. No pain," Asaerial explained.

Carol held Sophia tighter, the two beginning to sob.

"An end to sorrow, grief...regret. Everything," he mumbled.

Daryl threw the bottle of whiskey at the door, the sound of breaking glass shattering in all their ears. Rosie looked up from the symbol she was drawing to watch him pacing again.

"Open the damn door!" he yelled.

Shane ran at the door with a pick-axe, T-dog tossing another one to Daryl. Both men pounded against it, trying desperately to destroy the door.

"You should have left well enough alone," Asariel continued on. "It would have been so much easier."

"Easier for who?!" Lori whispered, her voice torn.

"All of you," he said. "You know what's out there. A short brutal life and an agonizing death." He looked at Andrea. "Your...your sister. What was her name?"

"Amy," Andrea told him.

"Amy." Asariel nodded. "You know what this does. You've seen it. Is that what you really want for your wife and son?" He looked at Rick.

"I don't want this!" Rick cried forlornly.

The axes kept on banging and Asariel looked to Shane and Darly.

"Can't make a dent!" Shane said, swinging again in frustration.

"Those doors are designed to withstand a rocket launcher," Asariel said.

"Well, your head ain't," Daryl bit back, running towards him as he swung the axe.

Rosie snorted from her position, trying not to draw attention to herself but loving Daryl's very typical gut reaction all the more. It wasn't like the axe was going to kill the angel so she barely looked up, but she did see Dale, Rick and Shane holding Daryl back.

"Whoa! Whoa!" Shane cried.

"Daryl! Daryl!" Rick grunted, trying to keep him back.

T-dog went and took the axe away from the man, huffing and shaking his head at the same time.

"Just back up! Back up!" Rick pushed Daryl back again, finally getting him to calm down just a little bit.

  
"You do want this. Last night you said you knew it was just a matter of time before everybody you loved was dead," Asariel said, looking at Rick and trying to convince him that this was needed.

"What?" T-dog frowned, looking around at Rick.

Lori's face dropped and she looked at her husband, her eyes wide with hurt.

"What?" Shane huffed. "You really said that? With all your big talk?"

"I had to keep hope alive, didn't I?" Rick pleaded, looking at Lori.

"There is no hope. There never was," Asariel said. Rosie shook her head, the angel just loved to keep talking.

"There's always hope," Rick said. "Maybe it won't be you, maybe not here but somebody somewhere-"

"What part of 'everything is gone' do you not understand?" Andrea snapped.

 _The part where everything isn't,_ Rosie thought as she wrapped her bloody arm up with a shirt from her bag.

"Listen to your friend," Asariel said, gesturing to Andrea. "She gets it. This is what takes us down. This is our extinction event."

Carol and Sophia continued to sob, Jacqui and a few others sniffling too.

"This isn't right," Carol said. "You can't keep us here."

"One tiny moment - a millisecond. No pain," Asariel said, smiling at her. Rosie almost growled at the angel's arrogance.

"My daughter doesn't deserve to die like this," Carol sobbed.

Shane stalked off, frustrated at the whole situation.

"Wouldn't it be kinder," Asariel argued. "More compassionate? Just to hold your loved ones and wait for the clock to run down?" He looked at Carol and Rosie noticed Jacqui nodding along.

The sound of Shane cocking his gun brought everyone back to the present and clear danger.

"Shane, no!" Rick cried, trying to come between the man and the angel.

"Out of my way Rick! Stay out of my way!" Shane barked, pushing Rick aside. "Open that door or I'm gonna blow your head off. Do you hear me?!" he yelled, his gun to Asariel's head.

"Right, so we're allowed to shoot the asshole but we can't put a pick-axe in his head?" Rosie scoffed loudly, swinging herself around and standing up.

"Nice to see you've finally joined the party," Daryl muttered.

"Dixon, I am the party," Rosie huffed.

"Shooting him in the head will do nothing. The bullets will bounce off him. Besides, the asshole wants to die..."

Asariel smiled at Rosie.

Rosie smiled back, gesturing to the lovely angel-banishing symbol she'd drawn on the side of the workstation. Asariel's face dropped and then hardened.

"You wouldn't..." he whispered, looking savagely up at her.

"I would," she said. "You fucking know I would."

"What? What's that?" Andrea asked.

"It's what got rid of the angel-walkers outside," Rosie explained. "It's an angel banishing sigil. Either he lets us out or I banish his ass to somewhere else. He'll drop back down to earth who the hell knows where, missing out on the destructive power of the H.I.Ts that could potentially have killed him and ended his lonely little existence."

"I told you, topside's locked down," Asariel said. "I can't open those."

"But you can open these," Rosie said, gesturing to the door Daryl had been pounding on.

Asariel nodded. "I just want to die...please..."

"You let us out and I'll give you an angel blade," Rosie said, her hand hovering over the sigil.

"Deal," Asariel said, scanning his badge again and putting the code in.

"Your vessel," Rosie said. "He doesn't want to live?"

"His wife was test subject 19," Asariel said, his eyes flicking up to the screen. "He checked out the moment I checked in."

Rosie nodded and strode up to him, placing the promised blade in his hand as the door lifted.

"Come on!" Daryl yelled, waving at the group as they all ran for the door.

Everyone made a break for it except Jacqui. Rick stayed back for a few minutes, thanking the angel. Rosie frowned as Asariel pulled him in to whisper something in his ear. They had four minutes left as they all ran out of the room as fast as they could. Rosie barely registered that Jacqui, Andrea and Dale weren't with them. She pegged it towards the door with Daryl, looking back to see the group saying a quick and tearful goodbye.

"I can't believe she's stayin'," Daryl muttered.

"I can," Rosie said. "This life...it isn't for everyone. It sure as hell ain't for the feint of heart."

Daryl sniggered at that, grabbing one of Rosie's bags and slinging it over his shoulder as the pair ran for the exit. As they reached the lobby, T-dog caught up with them. Him and Daryl launched themselves at the doors, banging against them and trying to get them to budge.

"Get them doors open!" Glenn yelled, running towards them.

"What d'you think we're tryin' to do!" Daryl yelled back, albiet without malice.

"Come on!" T-dog cried, racing to help.

The men were running around frantically, desperately trying to get out in the open. Shane and Rick started pounding on one of the windows with axes while Daryl, Glenn and T-dog continued to try the doors. Shane even tried shooting it with his shotgun and it barely made a dent. Rosie rolled here eyes, setting her bag down on the ground and unzipping it. She groaned when she realised it was the wrong one.

"Daryl! Throw me the bag!" Rosie called.

"What? What couldya possibly wan' in it now? Guns don't work!" he yelled, tossing her the bag anyway.

"I don't want a gun, I want the grenade launcher," Rosie said, digging inside the bag and pulling out her M16 with attatched M203. She grabbed one of the cartridges and quickly loaded it, trying not to think as the whole group were now looking at her in stunned silence. "Move back..." she murmured, gesturing for them to get behind her. She aimed the gun at the window Rick and Shane had been banging against and fired, shattering the glass and providing them with an easy escape. She threw the gun back into her duffel, throwing the bag back at Daryl as she picked up the other one, and followed the rest of the group through the window.

They all ran for the vehicles, shooting a few walkers on the way. Daryl swung at one with the axe he was still holding, taking it's head clean off. Rick jumped in the RV, Carl and Lori right behind him. Rosie pegged it for Daryl's truck, knowing her keys were rattling around in her bag somewhere and there wasn't time to find them. Her and Daryl threw the duffel bags in the back and she launched herself into the front seat, Daryl right behind. She didn't see Andrea and Dale jump down from the building or hide behind the sand bags out front.

As the building exploded, she ducked down flat across the seat and Daryl threw himself flat across her, his hands coming over her head. She heard glass shattering as the windows blew out and other cars and vehicles going up in flames. Her breathing was ragid and tears stung her eyes, she wasn't sure whether she wanted to laugh or cry. As the sounds died down and the flames fell back, she twisted around to look at Daryl, panting and exhausted.

She found her face inches from his as he started to lift himself off her, his hands either side of her body. His breath was on her face and his eyes seemed to bore into her own, but neither of them moved. After a few seconds he sat up straighter, Rosie turning to lie flat on her back as she looked at the ceiling of the truck.

"Fuck!" she panted.

Daryl chuckled, nodding his head in agreement before sticking it out of the window to see how everyone else had faired. He saw Dale and Andrea climb into the RV and started the engine, pulling out with everyone else and following them down and along the road.

Rosie groaned.

"What?"

"I left all my music in my car..." she sighed forlornly, looking up at him with a pout.  
Daryl smirked at her. "Not all of it. I nicked a tape or two..." He turned the stereo on and started humming along to the AC/DC tape that Dean had given her a few years ago. She found herself laughing despite herself and leant her head against the door as Daryl drove on. She had no idea where they were going or what the plan was, all she knew was that right now, it could be worse, and in her book, that was pretty good.


	9. Chapter 9

Dean glanced up at the rearview mirror, making sure he had Jen and Spence still in sight. His mom and Kelly were sat in the backseat, both of them gazing intently out of their respective windows. A couple other people had opted to go with them leaving the otherwise safe quarantine zone for the unknown. 

The larger group hadn't taken their departure well, but they'd had to swallow it nonetheless. Dean promised they'd come back if and when they could, but for now they had people to find and they were just lucky they'd stayed as long as they had. 

Mary hadn't wanted to leave. She'd dragged her heels and wound up nearly staying in Missouri. Dean wasn't even sure why she'd eventually decided to follow them, not ever having an issue with leaving them before. He loved his mom and as much as he knew she loved him, he sometimes couldn't help feel like she'd rather be anywhere else but next to him. 

They'd not long crossed the border between Missouri and Tennessee. Dean was heading for Georgia, despite knowing that Jen and Spence were heading for DC, he'd been adament that he head as directly as possible towards his sister. Sam had given him some grief for that, but Dean had barely shrugged and told him they didn't have to follow him. 

They'd been on the road for several hours, trying to dodge between the build up of traffic on the highways and the clearer but slightly more dangerous smaller roads. They were all getting tired and Dean was just about to suggest pulling over for a quick stop when a man in a long tan trenchcoat stumbled out into the road. Dean's heart skipped a beat until he saw the bright red tie that accompanied the coat, the scruffy sandy hair and the cigerette sticking out of the guy's mouth.

"Is that...?" Sam trailed off, narrowing his eyes at the mess of a man. 

"Yep, I think it is," Dean muttered. "Dammit. What in the hell is he doing here?!" He sighed as he pulled the car over, knowing the only other option would be explaining to his sister why he'd left one of her best friends on the side of a road without even stopping to help. 

"Who is it?" Mary asked, looking back and frowning as the guy ambled towards them.

"He's a friend of Roe's," Dean said. "Just stay here, hopefully he's not looking for a ride."

Both Dean and Sam exited the Impala and started towards the lone stranger. Dean nodded at JJ as he passed the car she was following in, letting her know they were all good and telling her not to worry. Spencer did not look convinced but stayed quiet nonetheless.

 

"Dean. Sam." Constantine nodded at each of them, taking a long drag of his cigerette before resting it between his middle and index finger, his hand hanging loosely at his side. "To what do I owe this pleasure?"

Dean scoffed and feined amusement. "You expect us to believe that this is a coincidence?" 

John laughed. "Course not mate. I don't believe in coincidences. At least not when I'm idle."

"What's going on John?" Sam asked.

"End of the world, if you hadn't already noticed," John snarked. "Although, I'm surprised. Even you two aren't stupid enough to've missed that one, ay?" 

"Screw you Constance," Dean snapped. "If you're not gonna cooperate, we'll be leaving." He turned to walk away but John called out to him.

"Hold up mate," he said. "Let's not be too hasty, now. I got information ya might want."

"And what information is that?" Sam asked. He wasn't Constantine's biggest fan but he didn't find him as contemptible as Dean did. 

"Not free information, I can tell you that," John said, an arrogant grin on his face. 

"What d'you want?" Sam said.

"Only to bum a lift," he answered.

"Where to?" Dean growled.

"Wherever you're goin' mate," he said. "I presume you're attempting to find Rosie."

"What makes you think she's not with us?" Dean scoffed.

Constantine laughed. "Like she'd still be in the car. She is your sister. I'm assuming you have met her."

Dean merely grumbled and grunted, turning on his heel and stalking back to the car. Constantine smiled happily and wondered after him, Sam alongside.

JJ rolled down her window to talk to Dean about the apparent random stranger they'd just picked up. John smirked as Dean did his best to explain why they were letting him come along for the ride, despite looking like he'd rather leave him as walker bait. 

"S'alright love, we go way back," John said, nodding at Dean. "He just hates anyone who looks at his sister like she isn't ten anymore."

"That's not true," Dean huffed.

Sam winced and shrugged his shoulders. "Eh...it's kinda true."

"Shut up," Dean muttered, walking back to the car.  
Constantine grinned at JJ and winked. "I don't think it helps that I kept hitting on his _little_ brother too."

"John..." Sam sighed irritably, his cheeks a little pink.

"I'd still go there Sammy, and I ain't ashamed to say it," he laughed, shaking his head as he followed after Dean. 

Sam turned to JJ and grimaced. "He's an aquired taste," he said. 

JJ raised her eyebrows, smirking at him. "Really?" she asked, waiting for Sam to catch up.

He rolled his eyes and groaned. "Not like _that!_ "  
JJ chuckled. "Whatever you say Sammy."

Sam laughed softly, shaking his head and walking back to the Impala. 

John opened the back door and eyed the two women in the back seat. "Alright ladies, mind if I squeeze in?"

"You're a friend of their sister?" Kelly asked, looking at Dean's furious face as he slid back into the driver's seat and practically slammed the door shut. 

"Name's John," he said, winking at her as she moved into the middle seat and made room for him. "Thanks love."

Kelly nodded and gave him a small but puzzled smile. She leant forwards to talk to Dean. "Why is coming with us?" she asked softly.

"Because one of the arts I mastered was that of blackmail," John said, smiling at her. 

"Oh..." Kelly sat back, her eyes darting from him to Dean and back again.

"I have information," John explained. "But I wasn't giving it up for free."

"How'd you find us?" Dean asked, turning the key in the ignition again and pulling back out onto the road.

"I wasn't s'pposed to find you," he said, his face growing dark and irritated. "I'm gonna have words with that bloody angel the next time I see him."

"Angel? What angel?!" Dean cried, his eyes wide and his heart hammering.

"Not your angel, sorry," John sighed. "Although, Cas is fine. He's gonna be as pissed as I am when he finds your sister though."

"What? Why?" Sam frowned, twisting to face him. "And how'd you know he's gonna find Rosie?"

"Because my angel found all of you," John said. "He was supposed to send Cas here and me to Rosie. But, well...here we are."

"You have your own personal angels?" Kelly asked in amazement.

John shrugged, a wicked smirk on his lip. "Mines more a reluctant babysitter than a lover, but, yeah...you could say that."

"A lover?" Kelly's eyebrows shot high on her head as she looked at a red faced Dean.

"Constance, I swear, I will throw you out of this car so fast-"

"-that you won't know what happened in heaven," John interupted, finishing the sentence he'd cut off.

"What happened in heaven?" Sam asked quickly.

"Hell," John said darkly. "The angels got overrun by the virus Asmodeaus made. Only they don't go down like people do. You still gotta stab 'em with an angel blade. Manny said that these zombies, these dead people walking...their souls are trapped in their rotting corpse shells."

"What?" Mary gasped.

"They found a way to power heaven with the souls in it," John explained. "You know they were lacking in angel power not too long ago...?"

"Yeah," Sam said with a nod.

"Right, so they used the souls up there to boost the power, stop the lights from going out every five minutes," John said. "They'd done it in a way that meant they weren't draining the souls but sort of moving the energy through some kind of reusable cycle. The more souls they could get the more efficient the system."

"But with the souls trapped in the bodies of the dead and the angels all joining them..." Sam sighed. 

"You got it gorgeous," John said, slapping a hand on Sam's shoulder. "Heaven's about sunk."

Sam turned his head to look out the window, wanting to process all the information Constantine had just given them. 

Dean looked at the hand still on Sam's shoulder. "Hey, hands off my little brother," he said, eyeballing John through the rearview mirror.

John sniggered and removed his hand, putting both of them up in a show of surrender as he leant back in his seat. Sam shot Dean an unamused glance.

"What?" Dean huffed. "I wouldn't have a problem with you and a guy, just not _that_ guy."  
Sam shook his head and looked back out the window.

"You heard anything about Hell?" Dean asked, his eyes flicking to John's reflection then back to the road.

John shook his head. "Not really. I don't make a habit of consorting with demons and devils." He gave Dean a hard stare but he didn't care. 

"It's just as bad as Heaven," Dean said. "The virus got them all too. Asmodeaus is dead and walking, completely zombified as far as anyone knows. Crowley is hiding out somewhere, yelling at everyone about a cure or a way of stopping it-"

"Has anyone found one yet?" John asked, his tone more hopeful than he wanted it to be.

Dean shook his head and sighed. "Nah...not unless Manny knows something we don't?" His eyes flicked to Constantine's and he saw the man sadly shake his own head. 

"Not as far as I know," John said. "But it's not like the bastard ever tells me anything anyway."

"Why's he babysitting you?" Kelly asked.

John looked down at her, checking her out. Finally he smiled. "Well aren't you a fine little thing," he said, waggling his eyebrows up and down at her. 

"Constance," Dean said, giving him a look. 

"What? You gonna tell me your related to this one, too?" John huffed.

"No," Dean said. "But maybe you should put your dick away for five minutes and focus on the problem at hand."

John scoffed. "Dean, it's been nearly two months since the world ended. The only problem at hand is how many times I get to use my dick before I die too."

Sam sniggered from the front and caught Constantine's eye. He winked and Sam shook his head, chuckling. Dean sighed and rolled his eyes irritably. 

"Well, I can assure you, you won't be using it with me," Kelly said. "Why does an angel have to babysit you?"

"Because I scare God too much to be left alone," John said.

Kelly couldn't tell if he was kidding or not, so she chose to simply nod and look out the window quietly.  
The rest of the drive was silent.

 

Dean pulled over an hour later, once he'd picked up Constantine he'd been given a little wake-up boost but that was flailing now. He stopped the car and jumped out, listening quietly for any noises or sounds of movement. Once he was satisfied, he walked up to the SUV to talk to JJ.

"How're you doing?" he asked.

"Glad for the break. I'm getting pretty tired to be honest," she said.

"Same here," Dean said. "I figure we rest, try and find a bite to eat and a bit of water, maybe some shelter. Either that or we switch drivers for a few hours?"

"Shelter sounds good," JJ said.

Dean, Sam, JJ and Frankie (one of the two people who opted to join them from the quarantine zone) decided to scope out one of the houses set back on the road they were on. Once it was clear and they'd managed to secure it, everyone else followed. Marnie (the other person from quarantine) started a small fire that they could all gather around and soon the group were relaxing as best they could and trying to get some much needed sleep.

Sam volunteered to go on first watch. JJ was sat next to Dean and as everyone began nodding off, she nudged him gently with her elbow and started a quiet little conversation.

"How's your new friend holding up?" she asked.

"He's fine. Pissed that he's with us and not Roe, but fine." Dean shrugged and smiled at JJ a little. 

"You sound a little pissed too," JJ grinned softly.

Dean nodded. "A little. He told me my...he told me Cas is with my sister instead of me. Manny, his angel babysitter, sent them to the wrong places."

"So, Cas? Your...?" JJ asked, her eyebrows raised and a teasing smirk on her face.

Dean sighed and shook his head, chuckling a bit as he looked up at her. "Uh, by conventional standards he'd be what most people would call my boyfriend."

"Really..." JJ laughed, folding her arms as if the story was just getting good. "And by unconventional standards?"

Dean shrugged. "Well, he's more than just a boyfriend to me...we've been through way too much for him to mean as little as that."

"To some people, boyfriend is like saying _world_ you know," she said. "How long have you been together?"

Dean shrugged again. "I don't know. I can't remember when we crossed that line between best friends and something more."

JJ frowned at him. "You don't know how long you've been in a romantic relationship with what sounds like the love of your life?" 

Dean shook his head and smirked. "Nope. We never really talked about it. It just sort of happened, really, stupidly, slowly."

"So how long have you known him?" 

"Ten years, at least," Dean said. 

"You say that like you're not quite sure," JJ muttered. 

"Jen, there's been a hell of a lot that's happened in my life. I don't even know how old I am anymore," Dean said.

"Are you trying to tell me that you can't remember your date of birth?" JJ scoffed.

"No, I know how old the world thinks I'm supposed to be," Dean said with a sigh and a small smile. "But I don't think they count the 30 years I spent in Hell."

JJ gawked. "You mean _actual_ Hell, don't you?"

Dean nodded. 

"Wow. That's some fucked up shit," she murmured.

"You're telling me," he murmured back.

 

"So you have Cas, what about Sam and Rosie?" JJ asked. "They got anyone?"

Dean shook his head, the name Annie floating through his head in that gruff southern voice he'd heard when he last spoke to her. "Sam's single, and as far as I know, so's Roe."

"As far as you know?" JJ said, smirking at him again.

"You remember much of the phone call we made to her after you spoke to Will?" Sam asked from across the room.

JJ shook her head. 

"Her full name is Rosanna and some guy was calling her Annie," Sam said. 

"No one calls her Annie unless they want a busted nose and a broken jaw," Dean said.

"Some guy was calling her Annie?" John asked, now sitting up instead of pretending to be asleep. 

Sam nodded and Dean barely suppressed a growl. 

"Well, soil my britches. Without her big brother there to protect her honour, who knows what she could've been doing," John laughed and shot Dean a wicked smirk. "Or who..."

"John..." Sam sighed and shook his head, unable to hide the amusement on his face.

Dean glared at the two of them. "It's not funny!" he snapped. "You really think some redneck hick is good enough for her? You think it's fine she might be with some asshole who knows how to take advantage of a lost and lonely girl-"

"She's twenty nine not nine," John said. "You gotta stop treating her like she's some poor defenseless child, mate."

"You gotta stop butting your nose into other people's business," Dean huffed.

"He's not wrong though," Sam said, grimacing apologetically at Dean. "And like you said earlier, the guy would have a busted nose and a broken jaw if she didn't want him calling her that."

"Maybe she's scared..." Dean sighed, trailing off as both John and Sam gave him a flat look. "Yeah okay, maybe not..."

"Maybe she really _likes_ the guy," JJ said softly. "Maybe she knows something about him that you don't. Maybe it's up to her to decide if he's good enough...?"

Dean shook his head. "No one is good enough."

"Why's she usually hate being called Annie?" JJ asked. 

Dean looked at Sam who looked at John, who looked back at Dean again.

Dean swallowed and glanced sideways at JJ. "It's what her mom used to call her when she was sober."

" _Her_ mom?" JJ frowned. 

"She's our dad's daughter," Sam explained. "Her mom was a junkie. He got drunk one night and went home with the woman, it became a regular thing. As far as we know it was just sex."

"Dad wanted nothing to do with her when she was born," Dean murmured. "He didn't even tell us we had a sister till her mom died of an overdose. All of a sudden, he turns up in the middle of the night with a distraught six year old screaming about wanting her mommy." He shook his head and shivered.

"Ten minutes later, he'd walked back out the door and left Dean to deal with the mess," Sam said, an underlying anger in his tone. "He didn't explain anything other than the fact that Rosie was our sister and her mom had just died."

John looked at the brothers and sighed. "You know, before he died, your old man told her the only reason he'd gone to get her was so the authorities wouldn't start looking for him. He couldn't take the chance they'd find him and take you two away," he muttered.

"What?" Sam said, his mouth agape.

Dean scoffed. "Like that would have come as a surprise. He barely acknowledged her the whole time she was with us."

"Only person he was interested in was Sammy boy," John said with a grin, winking at Sam. "Although I can't say I blame the man." 

Sam rolled his eyes and shook his head, smirking at John. "It's never gonna happen," he chuckled.

"One day, you mark my words," John grinned, "one day I'll get you in the sack. And it'll be the best fuck you've ever had."

Dean scrunched his face up in disgust. "Dude come on, he's my little brother."

"It's not like I can hit on Rosie, she's not here," John huffed. "So long as I get a taste of Winchester before I snuff it, I don't much care which one wants the ride."

Dean picked a small stone up off the floor and flung it at John's head. Sam and JJ sniggered as it bounced of the grinning man. 

"So long as you're not expecting it to be Dean, I think you'll be fine," Sam chuckled.

John laughed. "I'm not stupid enough to invoke the wrath of an angel like that."

"An angel?" JJ said.

"Cas is an angel, love," John explained, another wicked smirk on his face as she turned back to Dean with wide eyes. 

"An _angel_? You're sleeping with an _angel_?" she mumbled. 

Dean's whole face had gone a deep shade of red but he nodded nonetheless. 

"Wow..." she breathed. 

John laughed and so did Sam. Dean shook his head and tried to stop the smile from spreading out on his face, it didn't work. 

"Yeah, I'm not fucking with that sort of power," John said. "Not even for a good shag."

JJ chuckled. "Something tells me there isn't much you wouldn't do for a good shag...?"

"Something tells you right," John sniggered. 

Slowly everyone began falling asleep and drifting off, not including Sam who managed to keep his eyes peeled the whole night. Listening to the soft snores and gentle breathing of the people in the room seemed to sooth him and make him feel a little more at peace than he had been of late.

 

As the early hours of the morning crept in and the sun began to rise, Sam snagged the map from his bag and laid it out in front of him. He'd been thinking all night and wasn't sure what to do. There was a part of him that felt they should be helping JJ and Spencer get to DC, but an even bigger part of him that knew Dean wouldn't be on board with the new plan he'd come up with. 

Sam sighed, looking at where they'd been and where they had yet to go. He figured maybe now was the time for JJ and Spencer to branch off before they headed too far in the opposite direction, but he didn't want to leave them alone and completely helpless. Then there was Frankie and Marnie, he had no idea which direction the two of them would want to go. Mary would likely want to follow Dean (mostly out of guilt) but ultimately wouldn't be all that interested in finding their sister. Kelly would probably continue on with his brother, and Constantine had made it clear that he wanted to find Rosie. 

"What's up Sam?" Dean mumbled shuffling over to sit with him as he stared at the map.

"I've been thinking..." Sam said softly.

"Well, that's never a good sign," Dean muttered.

"Jerk."

"Bitch."

Sam huffed and swung himself around to face Dean. "I think we should split up."

"What?!" Dean hissed, his eyes wide and his brow furrowed.

"Hear me out." Sam turned the map so Dean could see what he meant as he pointed to places on it. "We're here, right?" His finger was on the small town in Tennessee they'd stopped at. "JJ and Spencer want to get to here..." He pointed to DC on the map. "...but if we take them to here..." His finger moved towards Georgia. "...We're essentially moving them in the opposite direction."

"So? They don't have to follow us if they don't want to," Dean said.

"No, they don't," Sam said. "But I think a lot of the reason why they are is because they aren't confident enough out here on their own."

"And that's our problem because...?" 

"Because they're our _friends_ Dean!" Sam cried quietly. "You know Rosie is gonna chew you out the minute we turn up with a bunch of people that wanted to be somewhere else. You _know_ she is..."

"So what? You take them to DC and I go find Roe?" Dean asked.

"Yeah, basically," Sam said. 

"You sure you're not trying to ditch your admirer over there?" Dean said, nodding at Constantine.

Sam scoffed. "No, but now you've said it, I'd have to say it's a bonus."

"For you, maybe. I can't guarentee I'm not gonna kill him before we get there," Dean huffed.

"So...is that a yes?" 

Dean growled. "I don't like it. How am I supposed to know whether you're alive or not?"

"Same way we know with Rosie," Sam said. "We feel it, and we trust that we'll find a way to let each other know..."

Dean sighed and shook his head. "Honest to God man, you die before I see you again, I'm gonna kill you..."

Sam grinned and nodded. "I'd never do that to you. Just don't get so focused on finding Rosie that your head ends up your ass, 'cause she'll kill you." 

Dean sniggered.

"And don't be a dick to the people she's with when you find her," Sam said, eyeing Dean seriously. "She's a grown woman, not a child."

Dean sighed and nodded. 

"I mean it Dean," he said, waiting for his brother's eyes to meet his own. "You have to trust her judgement. You can't go storming in and laying claim to her."

"She's our little sister," Dean said. "I'm sure as hell not gonna sit back and watch some guy take advantage of her."

Sam shook his head, a tired breath leaving his mouth. "I'm not asking you to. I'm just asking you to remember that from your overprotective big brother perch, to you it looks like _everyone_ is taking advantage of her."

"No it doesn't," Dean said, frowning at Sam. "I'm not overprotective. I let her hunt and fight and-"

"Yeah, you let her put herself in a position to get physically hurt all the time," Sam agreed. "Mainly because you know how to fix it. But you've blocked every effort she's made to find a connection outside of our little group. The only person who got passed you was Constantine and that's because he's a bigger dick than you are."

Dean glared at Sam. "I don't want her getting hurt."

"I know," Sam said softly. "But it's not up to you Dean. It's not your call to make. You'll end up losing her if you keep trying to push the people she cares about away."

Dean shoulders sagged a little and he gave Sam a small nod. He got what his brother was trying to say but he still felt Sam was wrong. Rosanna had felt the pain of losing a fight, she knew what it was to take a bullet or break a bone but...she'd never broken her heart. Dean couldn't let that happen. He couldn't let her go through something like that without trying to prevent it, especially if the person who broke it wasn't worth a damn.

Sam wasted no time in telling everyone what was happening. JJ and Spencer looked beyond grateful, the former almost in tears as she gave him a tight hug.  
"Thank you," she whispered.

Sam chuckled quietly. "Don't be. Me and Rosie are far less co-dependant. She'll be tearing Dean a new one when he shows up."

JJ grinned and nodded, wiping her eyes. Spencer gave him a friendly, one-armed hug and nodded along too.  
Dean wrapped his arms around his little brother as he said goodbye, holding onto him a second or two longer than he needed. He sighed and stepped back, nodding at Sam and trying to extinguish the tears burning the backs of his eyes. 

"Don't die," Dean said, giving him a serious sort of look.

"I'll try Dean," Sam said, chuckling and shaking his head. "Stay safe, okay?"

Dean scoffed. "Like that's a promise I can keep."

Sam turned to Mary and shrugged. "So..."

"I'm coming with you," she said softly, not really wanting to look at Dean. 

Sam nodded.

"It's okay Mom," Dean said, reaching out for her. "I figured you'd probably go with Sam."

"I'm sorry Dean," Mary said, looking at her son with tears in her eyes. "I'm really, truly sorry."

Dean gave a watery little chuckle. "It's fine. You gotta do what feels right for you. You don't need to be sorry, just be safe."

Mary nodded and wrapped her arms around him. "I love you," she whispered.

"I love you too," Dean murmured. 

He watched as Sam, Mary, JJ and Spencer all climbed back in the SUV and drove off. His gaze lingered on the empty road, not wanting to turn back and see a group of near-strangers instead of family. 

 

"Come on then, let's get to it," Constantine said, taking one last drag from his cigarette before flicking it onto the ground and using the heel of his boot to grind it into the dirt. 

"Kelly calls shot gun," Dean said quickly, watching Constantine's face fall and a sulky little huff escape his lips. 

Kelly smiled and jumped in the front passenger side seat as Frankie and Marnie settled in the back. Constantine begrudingly climbed in and shut the door behind him, glaring ahead at the road. 

"It shouldn't take us long to reach Georgia, depending on the route and whatever else decides to fuck us over," Dean said, switching the ignition on and pulling out. He passed Kelly the map. "Just try and keep an eye on where we are. If I'm veering off too much or you lose where we are, let me know, okay?" 

"Okay," she nodded, smoothing it out on her lap and finding her place.

"Tally-ho, then, 'ey?" Constantine said, slouching grumpily in the back seat. 

"Any backseat driving from you, and I'll leave you to walk, got it?" Dean snapped.

"Whatever you say mate," he said, giving him a tight lipped smile and turning his head to peer out the window.

The drive was long, slow and mostly silent. Kelly only had to ask Dean once where they were and remind him to head south a couple times. Frankie and Marnie had fallen asleep, neither one of them used to surviving on such a small amount of hours. Constantine had continued to stare out the window, saying nothing. 

The sun was beginning to set when Dean pulled off the highway and headed up the dirt road towards the co-ordinates Rosie had given him a little over two months ago. His heart was in his mouth as he breached the top of the hill, wanting to see his little sister alive and well more than anything. His face fell as he saw the abandoned campsite, nothing but a red sports car with no wheels sat on the side of the road. 

John was out of the car faster than Dean. He looked around, surveying the area.

"Well, at least we know she was still alive when she left here," he said.

"How do we know that?" Dean growled, his sanity starting to fray as he slammed the car door shut.

"Because I doubt anyone would have bothered writing your names on the car if she was dead, would they?" John said, gesturing to the message Rick had left for Morgan and the Winchester brothers.

Dean stared at it, trying to decide how he felt about it. 

"Come on mate," John said softly, "if she was dead, she'd have told them to write it."

"Unless they didn't listen to her...?" Dean said.

John scoffed. "If she'd found a group who wouldn't listen to her, they'd all be bloody dead."

Dean looked around and then back at Constantine. He let out a little breath and ran his hands down his face, shaking his head.

"Mate..." Constantine sighed, obviously wanting to say something but not sure if he should. 

"What?" Dean asked.

"Rethink, refocus, step," he said, looking at Dean as though he might get a fist to the face.

"What?" Dean murmured, his heart feeling as though something had slammed into it. His eyes were wide and his mouth was agape as he looked at John.

" _Rethink, refocus, step,_ " John said again, his eyes still on Dean. 

"How...?" Dean frowned at him, totally knocked for six. 

"We were on a case, few years back," John said, pulling a pack of cigarettes out of his pocket and lighting one up. "Got into a spot of trouble..."

"What kind of trouble?" Dean said, an angry tremor in his voice.

"The kind you wouldn't have approved of," John said, foregoing his trademark smirk in light of the situation. "We were trapped, she had a broken leg, could barely walk. We needed to get out of the hell we were in and she could barely concentrate. She was losing it, panicking, in a lot of pain."

"What did you do?"

"I asked her what you'd have said," John told him. "I asked her what her biggest brother would do if he were with her instead of me. She calmed down almost immediately and said 'rethink, refocus, step'."

"And you got out?" Dean asked.

"No, we died in there," John said, giving him a flat look. "Of course we bloody got out. Cas healed her leg so you were none the wiser mate."

Dean growled, not liking that Cas had kept something from him. He knew why but it still made him irritated and angry. 

"Rethink, refocus, step?" Dean said, looking up at him.

"Rethink, refocus, step," John reiterated with a nod. 

"I always used to say it when we were in a bind, when it looked like the light at the end of the tunnel wasn't there anymore and it felt like we were drowning," Dean murmured. "Rethink; look at the problem, find a way around it. Refocus; put all your energy into making it happen, forgetting any and all distractions. Step; take one small step foward and keep moving, one small step at a time if you have to."

John nodded, looking at the message on the car. "So we go to the CDC."

"We go to the CDC," Dean said, walking back to the car.


	10. Chapter 10

It took Rosie longer than she wanted to admit to work out where they were headed. They'd tried to stop for a few supplies not too far away from the CDC but were met with a rather large and dead welcome party. Shane almost didn't make it back to the RV in time; if it weren't for Daryl screaming, yelling and honking his horn to signal the others, Shane would have been a dead man. 

Rosie yawned and slipped further down into her seat, groaning at how uncomfortable she felt. Daryl shook his head, glancing sideways at her as she placed one foot on the dashboard.

"You okay?" he asked.

"Yeah..." she murmured. "Tired as hell but can't get comfy enough to sleep..."

"Why don't ya lie down?" he said.

"Cause there's not enough room," she said, looking at him like it was obvious.

"Sure there is, just stick ya feet up," he said, motioning to his lap.

Rosie managed to stop her eyebrows shooting into her hairline just in time. She toed off her boots and scooted her ass down the front bench so her head could rest flat on the seat. She stretched out and placed her legs on Daryl's lap, crossing her ankles. 

"Thanks..." she mumbled.

Daryl shrugged, his eyes on the road. He hadn't thought about what he was supposed to do with the hand not on the steering wheel, sort of flapping it about awkwardly. Rosie sniggered as she watched him through half-shut eyes, sleep almost having taken her.

"Just put your hand on my leg," she said, watching with amusement as he huffed.

"Didn' wanna make ya uncomfortable," he muttered.

"Daryl," Rosie called softly, her eyes getting heavier as she felt his hand gingerly come down to rest on her knee. "I don't think you could ever make me feel uncomfortable..." She yawned and wriggled down into the seat, her eyes finally drifting shut. 

Daryl looked at her in surprise. He'd never had that before. He was always under the impression that he made everyone but Merle uncomfortable or awkward. And if he didn't, they still didn't like him much. He stared down at this strange woman, thinking of all the conversations and moments they'd shared in the last few weeks, unable to compute that finally, maybe, he'd found someone it was worth investing in. It scared him more than being eaten by the dead. 

He focused back on the road and the task of following the convoy. They were headed back to the old nursing home where Rick had given away nearly half their weapons. He supposed now it might come in handy, hopefully giving them some friends they could reach out to. At least he figured that's what Rick was thinking. Daryl wasn't sure they'd still be there, and if they were, he wasn't sure they'd even be alive. Everything had gone to hell in a handbasket, you only survived if you were willing to go with it. 

 

A couple hours later and Rosie stirred. They were nearing the home but weren't quite there yet. Her feet were still propped up on Daryl, her outer foot resting on his inner thigh with her knee in the air. His hand was gently wrapped around her other shin, his thumb subconsciously smoothing backwards and forwards across her jeans. 

She quelled the smile on her lips and instead let out a huge yawn, stretching out even further on the seat before pushing herself back a bit, sitting up and crossing her legs underneath herself. 

"Hey," she mumbled.

"Hey," he mumbled back.

"How long was I out?" she asked.

"Two hours, or there abouts," he answered.

Rosie nodded, leaning back into the seat and putting her feet up on the dashboard again. She noticed they were nearly at the nursing home and she also noticed that it didn't look good. The convoy parked up, everyone looking around for any sign of movement.

Jumping out of the truck, Rosie scanned the area, Daryl instantly at her side. She nodded her thanks as he handed her one of her duffel bags and her favourite knife. He took the other bag and made his way towards Rick and the others, Rosie hot on his heels. The group made their way as quietly as they could towards the entrance.

"I bet they're barely hanging on. What makes you think they'll take in strangers?" Andrea asked.

"Well, what with the guns we gave 'em...they'll probably throw us a party," Daryl said, stepping ahead as he looked back at Rick. "Good call, for once."

The group moved towards the entrance, jumping through into the courtyard. Rosie looked around with a frown, Glenn voicing her concern a few seconds later.

"Where are the lookouts?" he said, looking up at the rooftops.

They rounded a corner and were met with the most digusting sight. Bodies strewn across the floor, the dead feasting on the remains. Rosie grimaced, the faces of those she'd grown fond of in such a short time staring lifelessly back at her. She noticed Carol and Lori holding tightly on to their respective children, almost cowering behind the wall. 

As Rosie looked back at the massacre, the dead began to rise from the half-eaten carcasses, their glazed eyes locked on the living people all looking in anguish at the scene before them. She let out a small, tired sigh and watched as Rick pointed his gun forward.

"To hell with the noise," he growled, firing his gun and taking a walker clean out. 

Rosie looked on as the men all let loose, knowing that their release of emotion was not going to be worth the dinner bell they'd just rung. She only had her knife and wasn't interested in getting in on the action when it was purely for effect. 

As the dead went down and the sound of gunshots cleared, the hissing and snarling of many more walkers could be heard heading their way. Rick waved his arm at the group, yelling at them to follow him. They darted through the factory and up to the nursing home, Rick with his gun at the ready and Daryl looking through the scope of his crossbow as he moved. Rosie gripped her knife, squinting around the place. She saw bodies littered along the hallway, several people flinching at the sight. 

"Keep your voices down, let's go," Shane muttered, leading them through and following Rick and Daryl.

In every room they passed, dead bodies could be found. The stench was profound and unsettling. Everyone was getting more and more upset, especially the children. Sophia cried out as she caught sight of a few dead and rotting corpses, unable to keep her voice down any longer.

"Put a sock in it!" Daryl hissed, turning back and glaring at her. "I'm not dealin' with this crap!"

"You leave her alone!" Carol whispered back, her hands finding her daughter.

"Either shut her up or I will," Daryl snapped.

"Back the hell off!" Lori snapped back. "And I mean now!"

Daryl's eyes met Rosie's and she gave him a flat and unimpressed look which made his decision for him.

"Are we staying or going?" Lori asked, her voice rushed.

"We don't have the fuel," Rick said.

"We hunker down for the night, okay?" Shane said, stepping up. "Rick; you, me and Daryl, we're gonna sweep the building. Make sure we're alone."

Rick nodded, pointing back to where they'd just come. "You stay here and baracade those doors," he said, practically pushing Lori and Carl back. "Keep them all safe, please..." he said, looking at Rosie. 

Rosie nodded, watching as Dale and Glenn pulled the doors shut. She started up a blockade as best she could with whatever she could find in the nearest room. The rest of the group lept to help her, grabbing anything they could to prop up against the door.

Just as they'd finished, a single lone walker came shuffling past. Everyone ducked, holding their breath. Carl held onto Sophia's hand as tight as he could, locking eyes with her and trying desperately to keep her calm. Rosie gripped her knife harder, closing her eyes and listening to the sound of the dead man stumbling about in the hallway. She could take it out with one single blow if she needed to but she'd have to open the door and she'd rather not draw any unnecessary attention to the group. As it ambled away she opened her eyes and saw T-dog motioning for them all to move down the hallway. They ducked into a larger room to wait for Rick and the other two to come back.

 

Rosie was on edge, pacing the floor, her eyes darting over the bodies strewn across the space. Something wasn't right, this whole scene wasn't right. Before she'd had chance to voice her concerns, Rick, Daryl and Shane returned. 

"Upstairs is our best bet," Rick explained. "We've cleared a few rooms, we can baracade those if we have to."

Rosie watched as Daryl moved around just like she'd done, knowing he'd seen the same thing she had and had come to the same conclusions.

"We'll be alright," Rick said, nodding his head.

"You mean it this time? Or are you lying to us like all the times before?" Carol said, her voice cracking as she looked up at him with trembling lips.

"That's not fair," Rosie said softly, looking across at her and forcing Carol's eyes to hers. "It's not fair."

Carol nodded and sniffed, hugging Sophia to her a little bit tighter. Rosie looked up at Rick, feeling for the man. He'd tried his best and it hadn't always worked out but they'd got this far. 

"What the hell happened here?" Glenn mumbled, looking around.

"What do you think?" Andrea said listlessly, turning and folding her arms as she surveyed the room. "They got overrun."

Daryl scoffed, still processing the sheer impact of the massacre and what it meant.

"Something to say?" Andrea asked, turning her nose up at him.

"Yeah, how 'bout observant," Daryl snarked.

"Observant," Andrea mocked. "Big word from a guy like you. Three whole syllables."

"Walkers didn' do this," Daryl said. "Geeks didn' show up till all this wen' down." He waved an arm at the mess in front of him. "Somebody attacked this place. Killed all these people and took whatever they wan'ed." He paced the room a little. "They're all shot in the head, execution style." He looked up and around. "Y'all worried about walkers? I'd be much more worried 'bout the people who came and did all this." Everyone seemed to see it now as Daryl looked back at Andrea, slinging his crossbow back over his shoulder. "Get a dictionary. Look it up...observant." He tapped his index finger against his temple, as though to really push his point home before walking towards the door.

"You should take a look at 'burn' too, while you're at it," Rosie mumbled, turning to walk after Daryl.

Andrea scrunched her face up and shook her head in disgust. "Why you're with a guy like him is beyond me!" she blurted.

Rosie snapped back around faster than a bullet, stalking up to Andrea and stopping with barely a hair's width between them. "You wanna retract that statement right about fucking now," Rosie seethed. 

"Excuse me?" Andrea scoffed, folding her arms and stepping back, eyeing Rosie with contempt. 

"I said you want to take that back, right _fucking_ now," Rosie reiterated. "It's none of your goddamn business why, but I'm happy to share it with you if you're really that fucking clueless."

"Annie..." Daryl called, shaking his head. "It ain't worth it." He walked out the door, in no mood to listen to the group run him down. He didn't have the energy to keep his patience in check.

Rosie watched him leave from the corner of her eye, her gaze still fixed on Andrea.

Andrea shrugged, encouraging her to continue, the contemptable look still etched onto her face. Rosie could see everyone else looking at her too, waiting for her answer and apparently as clueless. 

She frowned, completely baffled by their confusion. "You know, a lot of you wouldn't actually be here if it weren't for Daryl," she said, unable to believe they could all be so ignorant. "You all look down your noses at him, and despite the overwhelming evidence to the contrary, you still believe he's some dumb redneck with an anger issue." She looked around the group and shook her head. "His intuition is sound. He's a damn good hunter and sees shit that you don't even realise is relevant. He's a perfect aim with the quietest weapon, which takes a level of skill none of you are even near mastering yet. Hell, if he wanted to leave all of us in the dust, you can damn well bet he'd still be alive five years down the line.'

'I get that he's a little rough around the edges and he's not exactly softly spoken, but that doesn't mean he deserves your contempt or your biased judgement. You wanna know why I'm with him? I'm with him because he doesn't treat me like I'm crazy. He doesn't try to hold me back, he respects who I am and what I want. He doesn't take his shit out on me anymore than I take mine out on him, and he genuinely cares. A hell of a lot more than he's probably comfortable admitting." 

"He cares about _you_ ," Andrea scoffed quietly.

"If he only cares about me, what was the point in saving Shane earlier on?" Rosie asked.

They all fell silent, shooting little looks at each other other and shifting on the spot. She gave T-dog and Glenn a subtle nod, knowing the pair of them hadn't been as stuck up as the rest of the group. Neither had Carol for that matter but she was more concerned about Sophia than the current conversation. 

Unbeknown to the whole group, Daryl was leant against the wall, listening to every word. It was the first time he'd ever heard someone actually defend him with well thought out arguments instead of fists and fury. Merle always defended his little brother, but it was inevitably in a way that didn't necessarily disagree with whatever had been said or done against him. Daryl pushed off the wall and silently made his way down the hallway, knowing Rosie would follow him and not wanting to make it obvious that he'd overheard anything. 

 

A little later on and the whole group were sat upstairs in the room the guys had cleaned out. Shane and Rick had just walked back through the door.

"I ransacked the kitchen. All we found was the one can," Shane said, throwing it to Daryl.

"They hit the dispensary too, tore the door off it's hinges," Rick said. "Took everything except this." He passed a box to Lori as he walked further into the room. 

Glenn started laying out paper plates as everyone collectively seemed to drop.

"So what we came back for then was cough drops and..." Daryl squinted at the can in his hand. "Garbonzo beans."

"Was there any water?" Sophia asked, looking up at Shane. 

He dug around in his pack and fished some out. "Just the one bottle I brought," he said, flipping it over in his hand as he held it out to Carol and Sophia. "Just a few sips, okay? Make it last. Gotta get through everybody, okay?"

Rick peered out through a window as Daryl began to jimmy open the tin of beans with a small knife. Shane went and sat down back beside him, taking hold of his bag.

"What else you got in there?" Andrea said.

He took out a packet of chips and shook them, smiling at Glenn as he labelled them 'salty snacks'. "Courtesy of the CDC," he said. "I thought I'd be having midnight snacks in my air conditioned room." He threw a few more packets around the group. "Didn't know it'd be dinner."

Daryl passed the now open tin of beans to Glenn who spooned them out onto the paper plates he'd set out on the floor. Shane dug back into his pack again and came out with a bottle of liquour.

"Then uh..." he twisted the bottle in his hands a little. "Last of it..."

Daryl looked from the bottle to Shane and back again. "Is that ta share?" 

"Seen as how I owe you my life..." he offered the bottle to Daryl, who took it. "Guess I uh, guess imma go ahead and be nice to you. From now on." He looked briefly up at Rosie but she made no move to acknowledge his olive branch. She was basically ignoring everyone, even Daryl.

"I do think I earned the first swallow," Daryl said, a half smile on his lips as he took a knife to the seal on the bottle.

Lori looked up uncertainly. "Have to go easy on that stuff," she said. "Don't forget where we are." 

"Yes ma'am," he answered. 

Rosie barely looked up as she took her plate of food from Dale, watching him take Andrea hers. She heard without really listening as they had a stunted conversation, Andrea obviously not grateful for the life she was still living but too wrapped up in herself to realise it still could have been a lot worse. Dale left soon after and went to sit with T-dog on the stairs.

Rosie roused herself to care enough to listen when Lori stood up to talk to Rick. She caught Daryl's eye, the man staring intently at her like he could tell she wasn't right. She knew he wasn't likely to let it go but she also knew he'd wait till everyone was sleeping to ask her. 

"What's next?" Lori asked, watching Rick shake his head slightly. "We need to decide."

Rick looked at Shane and the man shrugged. "Fort Benning, Rick." 

Rick nodded and Lori copied him.

"Fort Benning," she said in agreement.

Rick sighed and looked up again. "I should've listened to you Shane. Woulda saved us a lot of grief if I had." He shifted on the spot, his eyes on Shane's. "Jacqui would still be alive...-"

"It was her choice, man," Shane said, looking up at his partner as he shook his head. "Do not take that on."

Rosie noticed Andrea sat against the wall, her head rolling from one side to another in frustration. She felt for the woman, she really did. She understood what it felt like to have your choices ripped away and it wasn't fair what Dale had done to her, no matter how much he did it out of love.

"It was her choice. It was her decision to make, not yours. No more than it was with Jim," Lori said.

As Rick looked like he was going to beat himself up some more over things that weren't his fault, Glenn started talking.

"All these people," he mumbled, his eyes slightly glazed. "Who would've done something like this..." 

Rosie looked up at him and it was as though he couldn't keep his thoughts from spilling out of his mouth anymore. She watched him as his lips continued to move, the words that came out upsetting almost everyone.

"...Just, come in here and murder everybody," he said. "Even all the old people. How sick is that?" 

Sophia scooted into Carol's lap and looked fearfully at Glenn as though he might be the man that had done it. Rosie made a mental note to help the young girl through this, help her to survive in such a punishingly cruel world.

"Is this something we need to be discussing right now?" Lori asked Glenn, giving him a pointed look as she walked across the room.

"Better if we, uh, all got some sleep, huh?" Rick said, gently stoking Carl's head with his hand.

Rosie watched as Rick, Shane, Glenn and Daryl all quietly got up and left the room. She couldn't muster the energy to leave with them, so for the first time in her life, she opted to stay with the women and children. 

 

Daryl shut the door as the other three grouped together in the hallway. His eyes briefly flickered over Rosie but she didn't look up. He knew something was up with her. She'd been too quiet since they'd arrived, not counting the dressing down she'd given the group about their attitude towards him. 

"Hey," Shane said, looking at Glenn. "The kids in there are terrified. And the all the women."

Daryl held back the scoff, knowing fine full well that _Rosie_ wasn't terrified. Defeated and deflated maybe, but not terrified.

"Guys I'm really sorry," Glenn said, shaking his head and looking more ashamed than he should have been.

"We're all rattled and exhausted. No one's thinking clearly," Rick said.

Daryl took a swig from the bottle of liquour he still had in his hands. _He_ was thinking just fine. 

"But we have to start," the sheriff continued. "Our lives depend on it."

"You're damn right," Shane muttered. "We can't ever let our guard down again. Like back at camp." He started towards the stairs where T-dog and Dale were sat, the other three following him. "Having us a fish fry with no one on watch."

Daryl offered the bottle to T-dog as he neared the stairs, knowing the man hadn't had chance to taste a drop since he'd been stationed on lookout. Shane was still on about the people that had died but didn't need to and Daryl had the feeling that the list was likely to get exponentially larger the longer they all lived. He knelt down at the stop of the stairs with the rest of the guys, all of them forming a small circle.

"Fort Benning, that's the consensus," Rick said.

"Anywhere but here," T-dog said.

"Rosie okay with that?" Shane asked, looking at Daryl. 

"How should I know?" Daryl frowned. 

"'Cause you're together, right?" Shane said, frowning back.

"Man, nothin' is goin' on with us!" Daryl huffed.

The small group smirked and chuckled.

"I know that," Shane said, shooting him a friendly smile. "What I mean, is that you two gravitate to each other, you're sticking together, right?"

"I s'ppose so," Daryl said with a shrug, feeling a little weird at having to answer that and answer for someone else in the process.

"Lori and Carl go where I go," Rick explained. "Carol and Sophia seem happy to follow us. Andrea is primarily with Dale. Rosie is the only one not in this circle who doesn't have a voice if it's not you. She trust you?"

Daryl nodded, remembering their strange little conversation back at the CDC and accepting the bottle back from T-dog.

"Good," Shane said. "Means she's not gonna bail or bite our heads off for making decisions without her."

Daryl snorted. "Can't promise ya that. Ya have met the woman, right?"

The group chuckled again and nodded before getting back down to it, now firmly decided on getting to Fort Benning.

"We're wasting fuel, driving so many vehicles. We need to loose a few," Rick said. "We'll syphon the gas out of whatever cars we don't take. Should get us free of the city."

"It'd be a start," Shane mumbled. "Let's just try to get a little shut eye tonight, okay? T, I'll spell you in an hour."

Daryl nodded. He wasn't likely to get much sleep but he could try. He followed the group back to the small room, settling himself down next to Rosie and looking across at her.

 

Rosie took a deep breath and felt her lips wobble as she breathed back out. She needed Dean. She needed him to tell her it was all going to be okay and that they'd been through worse, but the truth was they hadn't. They didn't even have each other. 

"We're heading outta the city tomorrow," Daryl muttered quietly beside her.

"I need to get out of this room," Rosie whispered, feeling like she was about to hurl all of a sudden. The claustrophobia crashed into her and it was like she couldn't breathe. She felt everyone's eyes on her, heard the sound of silence screaming in her ears. "Daryl, I need to get the fuck out of this room, right now."

She looked across at him only to see he was already standing, holding out his hand to pull her to her feet. He steadied her as she stumbled, putting the bottle of whiskey in her hand.

"Come on," he said, walking out the door and making sure she followed. He didn't even bother looking at thre different faces staring back at him, not wanting to see the smirking or worried looks he was sure was on them.

He'd grabbed his crossbow on the way out and headed for the roof, propping the door open as they quietly pushed through it. He watched as Rosie rushed to the edge, taking in deep, gulping breaths as though she'd been drowning. She coughed and spluttered, trying desperately to keep the noise down but feeling like she was falling apart. The bottle Daryl had given her was still clutched tightly in her hand but she hadn't even noticed it yet.

Daryl chewed on his lip, not really sure what to do. He could tell she was losing it and he wasn't sure he'd known her long enough to bring her back yet. He paced up and down a while, just watching her, before stalking up and snatching the bottle out of her hand. He took a good long gulp and set it down on the ground not too far from them. 

Rosie sunk to her knees, feeling tears brimming in her eyes and a harsh sting in her throat. Suddenly arms surrounded her, making her gasp in shock. She saw Daryl's legs line up beside her own as he dropped to his knees next to her. He pulled her head into his chest, a deep sigh escaping his lips as a hand wound into the hair at the back of her head. He held her tight as she fell into him, muffling her sobs in his shirt. Her heart broke and she fisted her hands in the tearstained fabric, one against his chest and the other looped around his back, pulling him close to her too. 

"I don't know what ta do," he murmured, his lips not far from her ear.

Rosie sniffed. "Just this..."

He nodded and squeezed her a little tighter, ignoring the ache in his legs that grew the longer he held on.

 

Rosie sniffed into his chest one last time before loosening her grip on him and pulling back. She wiped her eyes and sat back, feeling for the ledge of the building and twisting so she could lean against it. She saw Daryl swipe the bottle back off the floor. He took a decent swig, passing it back to her as he sat next to her, this time leaving no distance at all between them. Rosie sniffed again, her eyes welling up once more. She needed it, she needed _him_ , she needed to be close to another human being right now. She brought the bottle up to her lips and took a nice, long drink. 

She sighed as the amber liquid burnt her throat, feeling it slide it's way down to her stomach and quell the subtle sting that still resided there. She sat in silence with Daryl for several more minutes, loving the absence of an awkward atmosphere. She wasn't sure if it would make an appearance or not. 

"So...we're heading out of the city tomorrow," she said, repeating the last thing she'd heard before her sanity had crashed down around her ears.

Daryl nodded. 

"Who decided that?"

"All of us," he said. "Well...all the men. Lori and Carl are with Rick, Carol and Sophia are with Lori and Carl, Andrea is with Dale..." He repeated what Rick had said to him, leaving out the part where she was with him.

Rosie chuckled. "They made you speak for me, didn't they?" She took another swig of the whiskey and passed it back to him.

He took a long gulp and nodded. "Yeah...didn' like it. Assumin' ya gonna blindly follow me..."

"I'm not gonna blindly follow you anywhere," Rosie scoffed and took the bottle back off him. "My eyes were wide open when I decided I wasn't leaving you."

Daryl looked at her in surprise. "Whatcha mean, when ya decided ya weren't leavin'?" 

"Dixon, you are stuck with me," Rosie chuckled tearfully. "Through thick and thin, come hell or high water."

"What about ya brothers?" He frowned, his eyes meeting hers. 

Rosie shrugged. "I'll either find them or I won't. I just know I don't wanna do it without you."

Daryl shuffled uncomfortably. "Why?"

She shrugged again. "I feel safe with you."

He frowned, his cheeks a little pink. "We ain't safe. I can't promise ta keep ya safe."

Rosie shook her head. "No, not like that," she said. "I feel safe like this..." She gestured to the two of them, pressed together as they sat side by side. Her eyes met his as she looked back at him.

Daryl nodded, seeming to understand what she was getting at. "I got you."

Rosie smiled softly. "Exactly. I got you too."

It was like an unspoken agreement. He didn't have to watch what he said with her and she didn't have to worry he'd be reading more into their relationship than was actually there. 

"You ain't gonna fall in love with me or some shit like that, are ya?" he teased, swigging from the now almost empty bottle.

Rosie laughed, snatching the bottle from him. "Are you kidding me? Man, I ever fall in love with you and I can promise the only time you'll hear about is on my deathbed."

Daryl sniggered. "Imma hold you ta that."

"Perks of being a hunter," Rosie said with a grin. "Falling in love is foolish, admitting it is downright stupid."

Daryl nodded, chuckling along beside her.

"You and me though, right?" Rosie said, starting to pick the label off the bottle. 

"Jus' the two of us?" Daryl smirked, raising an eyebrow.

" _We can make it if we try,_ " Rosie sung, giggling as his face fell flat and he rolled his eyes. 

He grabbed the bottle back and took another sip, shaking his head. 

"Nah, not _just_ the two of us," Rosie said with a smile. "I don't wanna leave the group. I just...I wanna be with you, in the group." She rested her head on his shoulder, feeling a resonating warmth in her chest when he didn't tense up or pull away.

Daryl grunted. "You know, it's a good job I know what ya mean..."

"Wouldn't have said if I didn't know you'd get it," Rosie answered.

They sat in silence for a few more minutes, side by side, her head on his shoulder. 

 

"I'd never leave ya in the dust," Daryl murmured.

"Huh?" Rosie frowned, picking her head up and looking at him.

He shook his head and picked at his fingers. "I heard what ya said about me. I'd never leave ya in the dust."

Rosie nodded, her own cheeks turning pink like Daryl's had done earlier. 

"Ya really think all that about me?" he asked softly.

"And more," Rosie mumbled. 

"I ain't all that," he said with a shrug. "If that's why ya want me on ya team-"

Rosie shook her head. "You know why I want you with me, otherwise you wouldn't still be up here with me." She gave him a pointed, sideways glance. "All those things I said, they're just a bonus."

Daryl nodded. "I don't talk well...-"

"Good, 'cause I don't really like to talk," Rosie said. 

Daryl nodded and smirked.

"What?" Rosie frowned.

"I like a woman who don't always wanna talk," he sniggered, wiggling his eyebrows at her.

Rosie laughed and shoved his shoulder playfully. She took the bottle from him and finished the last little bit.

"Hey!" Daryl cried, still smiling.

"You deserved that Dixon," Rosie grinned.

He chuckled, nodding his head. "Don' feel like I deserve you though," he said, shooting her a rather sincere look.

Rosie's smile softened till it was barely on her lips. It hadn't escaped her notice that they were still sat so close to each other either. 

"Nobody told you that it ain't for you to decide?" she murmured.

Daryl shrugged. "Never found no one I wan'ed ta deserve."

Rosie held his gaze for a few seconds, mesmorised by this man's ability to say so much by barely saying anything. She let out the breath she didn't realise she was holding, took hold of Daryl's arm and wrapped it around herself. She rested her head on his chest, snuggling into him and saying nothing.

Daryl sighed, tucking her into him without a word. He liked this. Feeling like he had someone without the pressure of acting on anything that may or may not be there. They were comfortable around each other, they didn't care what anyone else thought, they still respected their individual skill sets and weren't suddenly depending on each other to survive. They had each other's backs, and they always would, no matter what was thrown their way. 

 

They stayed on the roof for a little while longer before heading back down to the group. Rosie wondered quietly behind Daryl, his crossbow swinging gently at his side. She felt all eyes turn to them the minute they walked back in, but she refused to meet any of them. 

Pushing the crawling feeling of suffocation away, she sat back down against the wall and waited to see if any of them would say anything. She glanced up at all of them, noticing the children had fallen asleep. Glenn was the only one looking resolutely at her.

"You okay?" he asked.

Rosie nodded as Daryl dropped down beside her, leaving a small gap between the two of them.

"I'm okay," she said. 

"You know you don't have to be?" Rick said softly, drawing her gaze away from Glenn.

"I know..." Rosie said. "And I can admit that for a minute there, I wasn't. But for now, I'm fine again."

"You still wanna come with us to Fort Benning?" Shane asked.

She nodded. "I got nowhere else to be right now."

"Just try to get some sleep," Rick said. "We'll wake you if we need you, or when we're ready to leave."

Rosie smiled a little. "Thanks, but I don't really sleep. Even before this whole thing went down, I was catching maybe six hours of sleep a week." She shrugged, bringing her knees up so she could rest her arms on them.

"I'm not plannin' on sleepin' any time soon," Daryl murmured next to her, his eyes flicking to hers.

Rosie smiled and shook her head. "Thanks, but I still don't think I'll sleep much..."

"S'worth a try," he said. 

"I suppose so," Rosie mumbled with a sigh.

"Why don't you both try and get some sleep? T-dog's on lookout, it's not like no one's watching," Dale said. 

Rosie shrugged, chewing on her lip. She looked down at her hands and began playing with her fingers. 

"I don't think I'm gonna get comfy enough to sleep, even if I wanted to," she said. 

Dale sighed and shook his head. "Seems a waste of a good night, to me. You're not gonna be any use to us if you're all burnt out."

Rosie scoffed. "Trust me, I'm not even close to burnt out." She let a small groan escape her lips and sighed. "But if it'll make you feel better, I'll try. At least, I'll close my eyes and pretend."

Dale didn't seem all that happy with her answer but chose not to comment. Glenn merely snickered and wished her a good night as she tipped her head back against the wall and closed her eyes. 

She was surprised at how quickly exhaustion seemed to creep up her body and settle in. Sleep evaded her senses and before she could stop it, her whole body had grown heavy and started to switch off. She was asleep before she knew it.

 

Daryl wanted to smile when he heard Rosie's breathing settle. His eyes darted around the room, watching for anything out of the ordinary. 

Shane scoffed and shook his head. "I just, I don't get it. I don't get why she chose you..."

Daryl scoffed right back. "She ain't _chose_ me. She ain't chose anyone."

Shane sighed, glancing at Lori and Rick. They were both still awake, much like the rest of them, listening to the quiet conversation. Lori wouldn't look at him, but she was watching Rosie as her head tipped towards Daryl. 

"It's not rocket science," Lori mumbled. "She feels safe with him." She couldn't stop the briefest of glances at Shane. 

Daryl shrugged, glancing across at the sleeping woman. 

"She's a woman who can hold her own. What's she got to be scared of?" Shane said as he shook his head.

"It ain't about being scared, Shane," Rick sighed. "At least not in the conventional sense. Her and Daryl are like for like, they understand each other...they get each other..."

"I understand her just fine," Shane huffed. 

Daryl felt his hackles rise and did his best not to glare at Shane. 

"Well it's not about you." Glenn cut in, frowning at the man. "It's about Rosie. Hell, looking at the state of the pair of them, I'd hazard a guess that niether of them really get it either." He shrugged, making brief eye-contact with Daryl as he did. The archer gave him the tiniest nod of agreement. 

Shane grumbled something to himself and stalked off to relieve T-dog from watch. 

Daryl looked down at Rosie, knowing that Glenn was more right than he realised. There was just this invisible pull he had towards the woman, like they fit together in a way he'd never fit with anyone else. 

T-dog ambled into the room a few minutes later, smirking at Daryl a little.

"Dude's practically spitting feathers out there," he chuckled. "Can't believe Miss Winchester would rather sleep next to you than him."

Daryl grunted, glaring at the doorway. "Ain't none o' his damn business."

"No, it ain't. Ain't no one's business but hers and yours," he said. 

"Exactly," he huffed. "Which is why we're all gon' shut the hell up 'bout it."

The few people who were still awake nodded softly. 

"For someone who doesn't sleep all that much, she sure sleeps pretty well next to you," T-dog muttered with a sly grin. 

"What part o' shut the hell up are you not gettin'?" Daryl growled. 

T-dog snickered and raised his hands in the air, backing off. Daryl folded his arms and glared at the man, his angry gaze travelling around the room as though daring anyone else to say anything. No one did.

The rest of the night was quiet and uneventful. Daryl stayed awake while Rosie slept, waking her halfway through the night so they could swap and he could get some sleep. She might not be burnt out yet, but he was certainly getting there. 


End file.
